According to health experts, a worldwide influenza pandemic may
be on its way. Authorities are preparing massive quantities of
vaccines, which will hopefully protect the public against the
fatal consequences of the particularly nasty strain of influenza
virus lurking in population centers throughout the world. Many
people, however, fear the exceedingly rare complications of
vaccines, preferring instead to risk the disease itself. What
would Ben Franklin say about individuals who decline
inoculation? Here is what he did say about the subject: “As the
practice of Inoculation always divided people into parties, some
contending warmly for it, and others as strongly against it. …”
It was necessary to have a strict and impartial enquiry into the
inoculation and death rates during epidemics. Few people alive
today are old enough to remember the 1918 influenza pandemic, an
event that killed tens of millions of people. Ben Franklin,
however, lived in an era where contagious epidemics—yellow
fever, malaria, smallpox, t