The Nik Nik Nik

Dr. Gladys West. 1930 to 2026.

Born on a Virginia farm during the Jim Crow era, Dr West became one of only four Black employees at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in 1956 and the second Black woman ever hired there.

The mathematician's calculations quietly became the backbone of GPS technology used by billions of people every single day. The world has navigated by her work for decades before it learned her name. That's the kind of legacy that doesn't need a spotlight to be real. It just is.

We honor Dr. West and the long line of Black women who built the future while the world looked the other way🤎

In the back. 

And the front.

su mer lovin’ “scream at own ass”

XKCD: Degree Off

“Smallpox was.”

For most of history, smallpox was (!!!) the scourge that haunted human civilisations. We have evidence of smallpox from mummies c. 1350BCE in Egypt. It’s speculated to be one of causative agents of the Plague of Athens c. 430BCE. There were outbreaks of smallpox in Angola in 1484, in South Africa in 1731 that wiped out entire clans of Khoisan people. There was at least one major smallpox epidemic almost every decade across Europe.

Smallpox was transmitted by droplet/aerosol infection; it tore through even the smallest population centres. Typical smallpox incurred a blistering fever, raised pustules, debilitating joint and back pain; if you lived — and that was a fat fucking if, as typical smallpox had a mortality rate of 30% — you’d have tell-tale pockmark scarring, and face stigma for the rest of your life. Some were left blinded.

The worst form of the disease was haemorrhagic smallpox; all the agony of typical smallpox, with the addition of skin haemorrhage and pinpoint haemorrhage in the spleen, liver, kidneys and gonads. Near-universally fatal, haemorrhagic smallpox made up 5-10% of all cases. Of this number, 72% were children.

The global smallpox vaccination campaigns of 1958 to 1977 were a monumental effort by the World Health Organization and its global associates, backed by incredibly diligent public health work and epidemiological monitoring.

Wherever there were outbreaks, there was herd immunisation. Health bodies campaigned tirelessly for the general population to be immunised. In the ‘70s, a concerted effort was made by the WHO to ensure vaccines were administered in the most remote and vulnerable communities in the Horn of Africa, South Asia and the Pacific.

In 1980, the world was officially, finally free of one of it’s oldest adversaries; universal vaccination had been achieved, and there was no population that could act as a reservoir for smallpox.

If mankind has only one great achievement, it’s the smallpox vaccine; to date, smallpox is the only human disease to be completely eradicated.

After over two millennia of suffering, mass disability and death, humanity finally had the means to give one of it’s biggest threats the biggest possible fuck you, and through scientific and public health collaboration, careful epidemiological monitoring and countless hours of on-the-ground vaccination efforts, managed to blot it from existence entirely.

Where there is vaccine coverage, childhood diseases with high morbidity and mortality rates like whooping cough, diphtheria, influenza B and have dropped.

We have vaccines for TB, another of our greatest and longest adversaries.

With enough effort to counter misinformation, more people fighting for vaccine equality, patent free medication for communicable disease, and universal vaccine coverage, and everyone making sure to keep up to date with their vaccinations, one day, we could be fortunate enough to be able to say;

But scroll up and look at that first graph. Really look at it. For 2000 years, for every society for which we have data, roughly 1 in every 2 kids died. I have two kids – statistically, one of them would have died (to be fair, my daughter was medically complicated in utero and the medication that saved her was developed in the 1960s, so in my personal case, there’s no “statistically” about it). Do you have a sibling? One of you probably would have died. Are you from a big family with lots of siblings? Your parents would have probably buried more than one of you, assuming that both of your parents had managed to make it to adulthood in the first place.

And to be entirely fair, there are reasons beyond modern medicine why childhood death rates have dropped in the last 200 years. Obviously, medical care is not the only place where we’ve made significant advancements in ways to reduce mortality rates in children. Like, 100 years ago children were still sent to go work in mines and factories in an era where OSHA did not exist. The fact that we don’t do that anymore also helps.

But medicine is a HUGE contributing factor to the childhood mortality rate plummeting. And some of it is big, exciting stuff, where a child is obviously dying, and a doctor gets to be a hero with a life-saving medication or procedure. That’s what happened with my daughter. And in cases like those, it’s super easy to draw a line of cause and effect. Child’s life was in danger -> medication given -> child’s life no longer in danger. Medicine saved the child.

But it’s actually much more common for a child’s life to be saved by the quiet, everyday work that primary care pediatricians do. Some of that is education – SIDS rates were cut nearly in half in the first ten years of the “Back to Sleep” campaign, which was just doctors telling parents that it’s safer to put your infant to sleep on their back rather than their stomach. But a lot of it is vaccination. Like, A LOT a lot.

I went looking for exact numbers, and I found this study from 2024. And I just want to quote the findings section of their abstract:

Since 1974, vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years of whom 101 million were infants younger than 1 year. For every death averted, 66 years of full health were gained on average, translating to 10·2 billion years of full health gained. We estimate that vaccination has accounted for 40% of the observed decline in global infant mortality, 52% in the African region. In 2024, a child younger than 10 years is 40% more likely to survive to their next birthday relative to a hypothetical scenario of no historical vaccination. Increased survival probability is observed even well into late adulthood.

Those numbers are huge. 154 million lives saved. 10.2 BILLION extra years of healthy lives. And the study didn’t even account for smallpox. Because as mentioned above – smallpox was. But the cause and effect line is much harder to draw. It’s easy to see how stabbing a healthy baby with needles makes the baby cry, and potentially get a little sick for the next few days and these things all seem negative. It’s much harder to see how stabbing a healthy baby with needles will keep them safe from a disease that they may or may not get in the future. And it much harder to see how stabbing my healthy baby with needles helps protect that other baby who is too sick to get stabbed.

--

My Great-Grandmother

I don't know much about my great-grandmother's childhood.

But I do know that when my grandmother was born, in 1934 in rural Eastern Europe, something went very, very wrong. Specifically, I believe, it was uterine rupture during childbirth, where the uterus tears open. Today, the risk of death is approximately between 1% and 6%. Then? It was much, much higher.

Luckily - very luckily - they managed to save both my great-grandmother's and my grandmother's lives. They then told my great-grandmother that she could never, ever get pregnant again, or she and almost certainly the baby would both die.

--

However, this was the 1930s in rural, extremely Catholic Eastern Europe. Birth control and condoms were not exactly widely available. This is why birth control is healthcare.

And tubal ligations ("tying your tubes") had only been invented 50 years earlier, in Ohio, and had not spread widely to rural Eastern Europe.

So, two years later, however it happened, she became pregnant again. The doctors told her, "If you have this baby, you will not survive, and the chances the baby will survive are incredibly, incredibly small."

This was the 1930s in rural, extremely Catholic Eastern Europe. Abortion is technically possible, but not legal. (Well, as far as I can tell. Regime changes, national borders moving, I don't speak the language, etc. etc.)

Her doctor convinces her, just barely, that she has a husband and a two-year-old daughter that need her. And that the baby almost certainly would not survive, either - she could not give her life to save the child, it would not work.

This is why abortion is healthcare.

As a result of that doctor, my great-grandmother's life is saved. She is excommunicated from the Catholic Church for choosing to save her own life. She gets to raise her daughter, my grandmother.

--

My Grandmother

If my great-grandmother had not survived, there is a significant chance that my grandmother would have died as a teenager, before my mom could ever have been born.

This is because, during the Communist takeover of the country, both of my great-grandparents were arrested and thrown in jail as political prisoners. It is the late 1940s, and the country is just barely out of WWII, during which it was subject to an incredibly violent and bloody Nazi takeover and puppet regime.

My grandmother had no family she could stay with. She was 14 years old, and alone in a boarding house.

My great-grandmother was held for two years (before she forced the regime to let her go in a story of massive badassery), at which point my grandmother is able to go back and live with her. My great-grandfather is held for seven years, before the brutal conditions and hard labor paralyzed his legs (temporarily, thankfully), and he was dumped on the roadside, eventually to be helped home by a series of passersby.

Would my grandmother have survived seven years by herself in a time and region of great political upheaval, most of those years as a teenager? I hope so. But there's no way to know for sure.

--

My grandmother, thankfully, managed to give birth to my mom and my aunt without any major complications, so far as I know. My mom is the first person in her family to be born in the United States.

Then, when my mom was oh five years old or so, I think, in the 1960s, my grandparents went to a neighborhood barbecue. There, due to an incredibly, incredibly shitty accident, an entire can of propane caught fire and was quite literally dropped on my grandmother's lap.

My grandmother was covered in severe third-degree burns all over her body. She was rushed to the hospital, where none of the doctors expect her to survive.

But, amazingly, amazingly, thanks to modern medicine, she did.

Thanks to burn care and surgical techniques and IV rehydration and antibiotics and high-grade anesthetics - none of which had existed even a hundred years prior - my grandmother survived, and would live for another forty years.

--

My Mom and My Grandmother

Unbeknownst to almost anyone at the time, the sleepy suburban community my grandparents have moved to was the site of a highly classified, highly experimental nuclear reactor with absolutely horrific safety practices, and the surrounding area is filled with radioactive contamination and cancers to this day.

My grandfather died of liver cancer in the early 1980s.

My grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer in the early 1990s. Thanks to modern medicine, they were able to (a) know what cancer is, (b) detect internal cancers like uterine cancer, and (c) safely perform the hysterectomy that saved my grandmother's life.

My mom was diagnosed with brain cancer in the early 2020s. And thankfully, thankfully, with state-of-the-art modern medicine, they were able to diagnose her cancer early and remove it completely.

We are celebrating one year cancer free for her tonight.

--

My Mom and Me

When I was born, I missed my due date by three weeks.

When my due date came around, my parents were waiting and waiting. And nothing happened, for three whole weeks. No water broken, no false contractions, no signs of labor - nothing.

After three weeks, when it was no longer safe to wait, they induced labor in my mom. Which worked to start labor, but not to induce childbirth. 40 hours later, I had still made little if any progress toward being born.

Ultimately, three weeks and forty hours late, I was delivered by C-section.

Cesarean section, or childbirth via abdominal surgery, has been around for at least two thousand years.

But it wasn't until the 1900s that Cesarean sections became something that the mother could also survive.

If it wasn't for modern medicine, my mom would not have survived - and depending on how things ultimately went, I might well not have either.

--

My Mom and My Sister

If my mom had died giving birth to me - one of the most common causes of death for women throughout all of human history, until the past hundred years or so - my sister would never have been born.

When my sister was born, just under three years after I was, she missed her due date by two weeks.

Once again, no sign of childbirth. So once again, they induced labor. And once again, inducing labor did not induce child birth.

This time, my mom was only in labor for 20 hours before they performed the C-section that delivered my sister into this world.

My mom and my sister are both alive and healthy today.

--

Me

When I was less than a year old, I came down with a 104 degree fever.

Fevers become fatal between 105 and 107 degrees, in humans.

So, my parents took me to the hospital, and the doctors rushed to treat me, with IVs and fever reducers and rehydration therapy and possibly antibiotics (I don't know if it was viral or bacteria) - none of which had existed just 100 years prior.

Thanks to modern medicine:

I survived.

--

This, or something like it, is the story of millions and millions of families all around the world.

In a world without modern medicine, far, far more than 50% of the people alive right now would never have been born.

Because survival is cumulative. For every single person saved - by modern medicine, by OSHA requirements, by the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and so much more - not only is their life preserved, but the lives of every single one of their descendants are able to come into being.

--

What Diseases Will We End Next?

I follow a lot of news for this blog, including medical news. I work in science communication, among other things. I was trained in research methods by a professor who specialized in the history and ethics of science. One of my closest friends has a degree in genetics and a master's in public health from one of the world's leading medical schools.

So, trust me when I say this:

We have regained and in fact exceeded the losses in public health, disease elimination, and vaccination rates caused by the COVID-19 pandemic across almost all ranges, diseases, and sectors. Less than six years after COVID-19 first appeared.

Barring a catastrophe on the scale of WWIII, it is incredibly, incredibly likely that in the next 50 years - if not much sooner - we will be able to say not just smallpox was, but also:

Polio was

Guinea worm disease was

Cervical cancer was

And, if we're very lucky

Tuberculosis was

and

HIV was

(HIV elimination sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x - there are so many different recent breakthroughs and avenues of hope I couldn't find just one link to summarize them all)

And, with the medical revolution brought about by the development of genetic sequencing, CRISPR, fMRI, MRNA vaccines, electron microscopes, immunology advances, and so much more,

Who knows how much more progress we will some day make?

i made a follow up! if this blows up, pls remember it is illegal to be mean to me. and i am a small artist you can give money to btw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve personally had the experience where my advisor told me “you should do such-and-such certification, go talk to Jill,” and I went to talk to Jill & she said “actually you can’t do such-and-such because XYZ,” so I went back to my advisor to relay this, and he just kind of shrugged and was like, “well if Jill says no, then it can’t be done” and that was the end of it. Complete veto power, no higher authority to turn to, because the only reason Jill can’t do something is if it’s literally impossible.

I screamed & had my husband turn the car around so I could get a picture of this place. you guys….. holy shit.

"The substances behind the slimy strings from okra and the gel from fenugreek seeds could trap microplastics better than a commonly used synthetic polymer.

Texas researchers proposed in 2022 using these sticky natural polymers to clean up water. Now, they’ve found that okra and/or fenugreek extracts attracted and removed up to 90% of microplastics from ocean water, freshwater, and groundwater.

With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Rajani Srinivasan and colleagues at Tarleton State University found that the plant-based polymers from okra, fenugreek, and tamarind stick to microplastics, clumping together and sinking for easy separation from water.

In this next stage of the research, they have optimized the process for okra and fenugreek extracts and tested results in a variety of types of water.

To extract the sticky plant polymers, the team soaked sliced okra pods and blended fenugreek seeds in separate containers of water overnight. Then, researchers removed the dissolved extracts from each solution and dried them into powders.

Analyses published in the American Chemical Society journal showed that the powdered extracts contained polysaccharides, which are natural polymers. Initial tests in pure water spiked with microplastics showed that:

One gram of either powder in a quart (one liter) of water trapped microplastics the most effectively.

Dried okra and fenugreek extracts removed 67% and 93%, respectively, of the plastic in an hour.

A mixture of equal parts okra and fenugreek powder reached maximum removal efficiency (70%) within 30 minutes.

The natural polymers performed significantly better than the synthetic, commercially available polyacrylamide polymer used in wastewater treatment.

Then the researchers tested the plant extracts on real microplastic-polluted water. They collected samples from waterbodies around Texas and brought them to the lab. The plant extract removal efficiency changed depending on the original water source.

Okra worked best in ocean water (80%), fenugreek in groundwater (80-90%), and the 1:1 combination of okra and fenugreek in freshwater (77%).

The researchers hypothesize that the natural polymers had different efficiencies because each water sample had different types, sizes and shapes of microplastics.

Polyacrylamide, which is currently used to remove contaminants during wastewater treatment, has low toxicity, but its precursor acrylamide is considered toxic. Okra and fenugreek extracts could serve as biodegradable and nontoxic alternatives.

“Utilizing these plant-based extracts in water treatment will remove microplastics and other pollutants without introducing additional toxic substances to the treated water,” said Srinivasan in a media release, “thus reducing long-term health risks to the population.”

She had previously studied the use of food-grade plant extracts as non-toxic flocculants to remove textile-based pollutants from wastewater and thought, ‘Why not try microplastics?’"