A SUPREME COURT OF SCIENCE 397 
against a danger which is probably little greater than the danger of 
being struck by lightning. How these laws came upon the statute, 
books, anti-vaccinationists explain by citing illustrations of activity on 
the part of the lobbyists maintained by the virus makers. They say 
school children are being vaccinated to sell virus. Now this move- 
ment is costing a large amount of money. This society feels that pres- 
sure must be brought to bear on legislatures throughout the United 
States in order to modify the laws. These laws rest on the implied 
scientific knowledge that vaccination is efficacious in a degree sufficient 
to justify a wholesale application of the remedy to the people, and that 
the danger of smallpox is sufficient to justify the application and 
that no other remedy is available against the danger so desirable as the 
remedy called for by the compulsory vaccination laws. 
We should remember that these laws were made by legislatures of 
states, and that the legislatures passed the laws on the recommenda- 
tions of committees composed of men of average intelligence who could 
not have had scientific knowledge of the issue without expert testi- 
mony. Now, such laws as these are apt to be passed without careful 
consideration, and it is doubtful whether this scientific knowledge has 
been sufficiently determined. We must as scientists differentiate between 
traditional scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge based on evi- 
dence which is conclusive enough to stand the test of a court of science. 
Who would not like to see a case brought against the custom of 
vaccination in a supreme court of science before a grand jury consist- 
ing of twenty-five scientific and engineering experts drawn from the 
various walks of the scientific professions. Let such a case be argued 
by legal counsel and all evidence introduced by experts on both sides 
be subject to cross examination. Ina comparatively short time and at a 
relatively small expense, society would be in a position to know whether 
in the judgment of a jury of impartial experts trained to the weighing 
of real scientific facts, the evidence justified the position that vaccina- 
tion is clearly efficacious to a degree sufficient to justify a wholesale 
vaccination of little children in the schools throughout the country, and 
even if efficacious in such degree whether the danger of smallpox is 
sufficient to justify the application of the precaution, and further that 
no other remedy, less dangerous and less costly or more efficacious ex- 
ists, such, for instance, as effective quarantine, which is considered by 
the anti-vaccinationists to be the more desirable. In such a way, this 
question, which has disturbed us for forty years or more and will 
furnish a running agitation for a decade or two longer in all probabil- 
ity, could be settled once for all with dispatch. 
Before such a court of science, all interested parties 
; could appear 
with experts, on the one side the virus manufacturers, the physicians 
