RFK, Jr. Challenges Peter Hotez to a Debate: Postscript

Serious reflections on Mr. Kennedy's sincere offer to debate the tropical medicine professor.

By JOHN LEAKE

Last night I came home from dinner with friends and saw a brief report on Joe Rogan’s offer to donate $100,000 to Dr. Peter Hotez’s favorite charity if he will agree to debate RFK, Jr. The presidential candidate then offered further encouragement in a polite Tweet:

As I noted, this exchange inspired Steve Kirsch, Bill Ackman, Andrew Tate, and others to offer additional large sums to incentivize Dr. Hotez. Something about all these rich guys throwing money at Hotez like high-rolling gamblers at a prize fight really tickled me, and I was inspired to write my reflections on the story in a comical tone.

This morning I woke up and realized that—in spite of the circus-like appearance of this story—Mr. Kennedy’s offer to debate Dr. Hotez is serious and sincere. If Dr. Hotez sincerely believes that the COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives and that the MMR vaccines do NOT cause autism in children, then it seems to me that he has a moral duty to debate the presidential candidate.

My more serious reflections about about this matter also prompted me to do a bit more research on Peter Hotez—Dean of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine—and I stumbled across this fascinating post by fellow Substack author, A Midwestern Doctor.

I was especially intrigued by the Midwestern Doctor’s review of Hotez’s book, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism. I have long perceived that Dr. Hotez’s fervent embrace of vaccines has a strong ideological element that is akin to religious faith, which reminded me of the famous Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, who passionately advocated inoculation during a smallpox outbreak in Boston in 1721.

Cotton Mather—a child prodigy and graduate of Harvard College—was an extremely influential man in the early intellectual history of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Mather believed equally in the natural world of cause and effect, and the supernatural world of spirits and witches, and he was an advising judge during the Salem Witch Trials. I have often thought of Mather as a striking example of how we may be inclined to believe in a purportedly scientific proposition in much the same way as we adopt an article of religious faith.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I often got the impression that the fervent embrace of the so-called COVID-19 vaccines strongly resembled religious conviction, and it frequently reminded me of Cotton Mather.

This morning, as I read A Midwestern Doctor’s review of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, I was surprised to see this excerpt from the book:

In the early 18th Century, smallpox inoculation was the procedure of rubbing particles from a smallpox scab into a small cut on the recipient’s arm. During the Boston outbreak of 1721, Cotton Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston advocated the technique. Dr. William Douglass argued that the technique was untested and based more on folklore than scientific analysis, and he feared that widespread inoculation would accelerate the disease’s spread through the city.

Before the COVID-19 vaccine debacle, I assumed that Mather and Boylston were were on the right side of history. Here in Dallas, my great, great grandfather, William Reid Wilson, was a pioneering health officer of the City of Dallas who argued in favor of smallpox inoculation, and for years I took family pride in his intellectual discernment.

Now I’m not so sure. In a recent conversation with Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, she claimed to have found extensive documentary evidence that 18th Century smallpox inoculation caused needless infections and may have played a significant role in the spread of syphilis. I’ve not yet had a chance to investigate her claims, but I’m very interested in learning more about her view of this period in medical history. Yesterday she sent me an e-mail proposing that we talk about it here on the Courageous Discourse Substack, so stay tuned.