Jeremy, thank you for the website. As a nurse myself I have always wondered how they managed to infect just the indians when everyone should have the disease, plus the fact that the virus would not live long enough to transport the blankets, etc. A few people have a natural immunity to smallpox, but the rest have to be vaccinated, and that was not available back then. It would have been suicide for everyone involved. Joyce Moore [email protected] wrote: In response to: MsTigerHawk wrote: >Don't forget about all the Native Americans who died of smallpox after having been given smallpox-infested blankets by the white soldiers. This is what they were told to do by the government. Just another incidence of genocide. > > Colleen =================== There is one case only that has given rise to this generalization - the case of Major Amherst during the French and Indian War. While Major Amherst approved the suggestion that infected blankets be used to infect Indians, there is no evidence that the attempt was carried out. There is no evidence of any other such attempt. Further, it is considered impossible to use intermediary objects such as blankets to transmit the disease, which is passed person to person. I read an article on the medical aspects of this a few years ago, written by physicians at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, but I've forgotten where. They explained the impossibility of such an attempt's being effective, because of the need to maintain a hospitable environment for whatever organism carries the disease. For an informative discussion of the matter (a discussion that predates that article), see: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~west/threads/disc-smallpox.html The wide generalization of a doubtful case is a kind of rhetoric that unfortunately appears in numerous diatribes against all the colonists including the Pilgrims. The accusation has nothing to do with them. The Pilgrims attempted to get along with their immediate neighbors, and they managed to do so for more than half a century. Jeremy Bangs ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message