Incidence of medical topics per year on the Golden Age/Consolation/Awake Magazines

by ILoveTTATT2 5 Replies latest jw friends

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  ILoveTTATT2

  I did a study where I searched in the individual yearly PDF's of the Golden Age / Consolation / Awake, or I searched in the 2015 Watchtower Library, for the following terms:
  
  Aluminum

  Vaccine/Vaccines/Vaccination/Serum

  Transfusion

  Transplant/Transplants

  I did not discriminate between positive and negative mentions of the terms.

  For "Aluminum" I actually searched for "Alumi" and Adobe would search for words that started with that.
  For "Vaccines" I actually searched for "vacc". I searched for "serum" for the serum search, but in the years 1940 and up I had to be careful that they were talking about vaccines and not blood transfusions when the term "serum" was used.
  For "transfusions" I actually searched for "transfu".
  For "transplants" I actually searched for "transpl" and made sure that organ transplants were being discussed and not plant transplantation.
  
  Some interesting facts:
  
  In 1934, the word "aluminum" was mentioned a whopping 436 times, this is 100 times more the average mention in the years 1970-2015.
  
  In 1921, the word "vaccine" was mentioned MORE than the word "Jehovah"... 149 vs 132 times.
  
  Here are the graphs:

  

  

  

  

  
  
• 

  steve2

  Interesting results from your word search project - but context is also important.

  I would imagine that in the 1930s, even the non-religious press was producing a lot of literature on aluminium and vaccines, especially given that the latter was at the cutting edge of medical interventions at the time. It is not unlike the earlier days of microwave ovens in which the secular media produced a large number of "warning" material on the risks of microwave ovens, especially as their use became more widespread.
  
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  scratchme1010

  I agree with Steve2. The research can become more interesting if you search for phrases that might give more context. My guess is that the numbers will be different but the graph will look similar.
  
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  ILoveTTATT2

  Interesting results from your word search project - but context is also important.
  I would imagine that in the 1930s, even the non-religious press was producing a lot of literature on aluminium and vaccines, especially given that the latter was at the cutting edge of medical interventions at the time.

  That view is completely wrong. Vaccines had been a demonstrated technology for over a century by 1930 in the case of smallpox, and over 50 years in the case of diphteria. In fact, the very first Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1901 was awarded to those who discovered a method for producing diphteria serum!
  
  https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1901/
  
  The fact is, going against aluminum or vaccines in the 1930's was quackery. They were fools and made fools of themselves for decades.
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  stuckinarut2

  Here is a great video about this!

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2g9UjO-Bk
  
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  steve2

  That view is completely wrong. Vaccines had been a demonstrated technology for over a century by 1930 in the case of smallpox, and over 50 years in the case of diphteria. In fact, the very first Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1901 was awarded to those who discovered a method for producing diphteria serum
  

  I agree with what you say about vaccines. Yes they had been in use for the better part of a century - but their wider spread use only got off the ground so to speak in the 20th Century when their use in some countries became mandatory.

  What I should have explicitly said was that there were widespread reports in the mainstream press in the 1920s and1930s questioning vaccines and in particular the safety of aluminium cooking and oven ware - a totally different topic altogether.

  I should have also stated that the "warning" information was at best misinformed and at worst quackery. The fact is that, at that time, JW literature was not alone in its warnings (please do not read this as my endorsing JW organization).

  I am not disagreeing with you - but just suggesting some wider context regarding other outlets were sounding similar concerns and warnings.