Here’s an interesting #BHM challenge:
You get to choose any three people, living or dead, to answer 1 question:
Who is responsible for saving the most lives in all of human history?
I’d argue than no one can beat my team.
A thread.
The first 1 is easy. You probably already know her name:
Henrietta Lacks
Although her cells were harvested without her consent, its possible that we’ll EVER KNOW how many lives were saved because of HeLa cells.
hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lack…
My favorite fact is that, even though Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, it was 2 Black scientists at Tuskegee Institute who proved his worked and created the process to mass produce it.
scientificamerican.com/article/hidden…
It’s not just polio. HeLa cells were used in 70,000 medical studies including the Human Genome Project & developing the COVID vaccine. If there’s ever a cancer cure, HeLa cells will likely be involved.
I think the WHO count of 10 million lives saved is low but I’ll go with it
Number 2 is also kind of easy:
Dr Charles Drew
You probably know Drew created the process for collecting & storing blood plasma. You might know he was the creator of the blood bank. But he didn’t have research assistants or get funding.
It was his doctoral THESIS!
But that isn’t even the craziest part. Remember, most medical
schools were segregated at the time, so he dedicated his life to training Black doctors. For a decade after his death, 2 out of every 3 Black surgeons were personally trained by Dr. Drew.
No that’s not the crazy part
See, when the Nazis attacked Great Britain, Drew was appointed to lead the Red Cross’s Blood for Britain project to figure out how to collect & send blood to British soldiers & civilians. By the time America entered the war, Drew had figured out how to package DRIED PLASMA
He created a refrigerated truck called a “bloodmobile” that could take blood to soldiers on the battlefield. Bloodmobiles were on the scene at every Nazi concentration camp. The surgeons general of the army AND the Navy called his process “the greatest lifesaver of WWII”
His innovations weren’t just used for war. It’s used for cancer treatment, auto accidents, pregnancies and shock. But here’s why it’s impossible to totally how many lives were saved by Dr. Charles Drew.
In America alone, Dr. Charles Drew’s innovation save 2 lives every second.
The 3rd is a gimme, too.
Onesimus.
The enslaved man didn’t just introduce smallpox inoculations to America, because of Onesimus, it’s how Dr Edward Jenner got the idea to use cowpox as the world’s first successful vaccine.
If not for Onesimus, there might not be ANY vaccine
Or an America.
At the beginning of the American Revolution, smallpox ravaged colonial forces. Because of a strong, white antivaxx movement in VA & Mass, vaccine mandates were illegal.
George Washington made the Continental Army get the original ONESIMUS inoculation anyway
So there might not be an America without Onesimus.
It’s estimated that smallpox may have killed as many as half a billion people in the 20th century ALONE.
In 1977, smallpox was the first disease to be eradicated from the earth.
My only question is whether Onesimus gets credit for ALL vaccines or just for smallpox. Can I count the lives saved by the Salk vaccine twice? How about cancer treatments that use blood plasma and HeLa cells?
Anyway…
Who y’all got?
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