The man who may have saved your life
A great American died recently, one whom most of us have never heard of but whose work may have saved our lives or the lives of those near to us.
Dr. John B. Robbins developed a vaccine against Hib meningitis that some estimate has saved 7 million lives since it was licensed in 1989, according to an obituary in the New York Times.
Now the disease, which brought about brain damage, deafness and death to babies born with it, is all but wiped out, only being found in one in every million children in the United States.
Robbins and a longtime collaborator, Dr. Rachel Schneerson, developed a technique called conjugation that made vaccines more visible to infants’ immune systems, thus better helping their bodies generate the protective antibodies needed to fight disease. That made vaccines more effective against a host of diseases, including typhoid fever, whooping cough, E. coli bacteria and anthrax, according to the obituary.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Robbins, who died Nov. 27 at 86 from prostate cancer at his home in New York, did not profit personally from his discoveries. “We had a notion — a wrong notion, maybe — that public money went into making it, so it should be free to the public,” Schneerson told the Times.
That notion was not wrong; medicine should be about helping humanity, not making money. Robbins’ impact will continue with every baby born healthy because of his discovery.
Charlie Smith
Colombian Progress
Bench becoming more political
For decades, Mississippi has tried — at least ostensibly — to shield its judiciary from partisan politics.
But that shield is being pulled away, to the detriment of public trust in the impartiality in the bench.
The federal courts ruled years ago that political parties cannot be barred from endorsing judicial candidates. And last week, the Mississippi Supreme Court amended its rules to remove the prohibition on candidates for judicial office from soliciting those endorsements.
It will probably only be a matter of time before judges are allowed to run under party labels, as has been unsuccessfully proposed in the Legislature in recent years.
These changes may be making plain what has already been going on obliquely, since some of those running for nonpartisan judicial office have partisan ties, including having previously won or sought other offices under party labels.
Further politicizing the judiciary, however, will not enhance the public’s confidence in its fairness.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
