Electricity’s Dark Side: Lessons from the Past
Update Dec 7, 2024 Vaccine choice.
Lacking standards and in a rush to be electrified, towns found themselves saddled with shoddy work. Birds and insects attracted to the light were killed in large numbers, their tiny bodies littering the streets. A few high-profile deaths, including one telegraph lineman whose body lay trapped in wires for an hour and a half shooting flames from his mouth, left people wary of the dangers inherent in electricity. But nothing stopped the spread of electric light.
“Let There Be Light”, Distillations Magazine, Fall 2015, p. 45
These days, what would bloggers and conspiracy theorists make of the image mentioned above—a telegraph lineman … flames shooting from his mouth?
Today, would telegraph lines and poles be knocked down to protect against an evil invention?
Would electricity be so roundly vilified that electrical appliances would never have invented to ease the chores of housework?
Must we banish danger so rigorously from our lives that nothing new can be attempted? Must one death from an individual’s adverse reaction to a vaccine mean that a million lives can’t be saved by the distribution of a new vaccine?
That is a difficult philosophic conundrum, especially when each human life is valued as infinitely important.
Nonetheless, pragmatically I vote for creating the vaccine and allowing each individual the right to avail themselves of it or not. A prime condition for sensible choice is access to fair and truthful information of the benefits and dangers.
