Chapter 74: The Conqueror of AIDS (8)
“Even though there are people who are against the development of the HIV vaccine, there are way more emails from people who support it,” Yoo Song-Mi said. “So, it will take a while for you to find them yourself. I will gather the emails that are against it and send them to you.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Young-Joon went back to working on his documents.
In thirty minutes, Yoo Song-Mi organized the email inbox. As a bonus, she showed up with a cup of iced americano.
“It seems like you always have one at this time.”
“Thank you.”
Young-Joon slowly went through his inbox. There were vaccine skeptics among students at the most prestigious universities in the country like Jungyoon University. There were more than that among the general public. They were quite concerned about the technology Young-Joon was developing.
[Dear Doctor Ryu Young-Joon. I am a citizen who has supported you for a long time. Do you know RCWM? It’s a movement to raise our children without medicine.[1] Vaccines are dangerous. It was nice that you developed a lot of good drugs and treatments, but I don’t understand why you are trying to go down an unverified and dangerous path…]
[My name is Kim Pil-Young, and I am a second-year history major at Jungyoon University. Recently, there has been a movement against the development of the HIV vaccine in the Green Square at Jungyoon University. I would like to ask you, Ryu Young-Joon sunbae. Vaccines are…]
[Doctor Ryu, if something like an HIV vaccine comes out, people’s sex lives are going to become more immoral and dirty. Doesn’t AIDS happen from dirty sexual intercourse? In fact, the percentage of AIDS is high in homosexuals who engage in anal sex. I think that AIDS might actually increase.]
Click.
Young-Joon closed his inbox.
—They are funny people. There are only two organisms in the entire world that were created from nothing: one is the common ancestor of all organisms, and the other is me.
Rosaline said.
—Organisms never just appear. Are they saying that HIV is magically created in thin air and causes AIDS while non-infected people have sexual intercourse promiscuously? That does not happen. It's not that easy even if ordinary scientists tried their hardest to create it by reacting all kinds of liquid cultures and organic matter with a thermocycler.
Young-Joon was lost in serious thought with his chin resting on his hand.
—You’re bothered by it. I don’t think you need to. Just ignore it. That’s a kind of thing that would have worked before the nineteenth century when Pasteur was experimenting with a swan-neck flask.
“It’s not that simple,” Young-Joon said.
Vaccine conspiracy theories weren’t a new phenomena. It wasn’t something that could be dismissed as just ignorance. This was because the more developed countries with higher education levels tended to have stronger beliefs in vaccine conspiracy theories. In particular, it was especially stronger in highly educated, high-income Caucasian people in America. Personal experiences about the side effects of vaccines, and a sense of security that there were no life-threatening infectious diseases everywhere like developing countries. They were the ones who created distrust and opposition to vaccines.
In addition, a solid logic was created when those who were educated in democracy began to appeal to the individual freedom of choice. That was why President Clump of the United States appointed an anti-vaxxer as the chairman of the Vaccine Safety Committee. 𝓯𝘳𝘦𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝓃ℴ𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝓬𝘰𝑚
Young-Joon, who was then working on anticancer drugs, thought it was ridiculous when he heard the news. How shocked would scientists who studied immunology and vaccines have been? In one American immunology journal, they commented that the appointment was an international embarrassment.
But that person was still acting in that position. That was how strong the opposition to vaccines in developed countries like the U.S. was. There were no full-fledged movements in Korea yet, but there was a possibility that the HIV vaccine would be the starting point.
—If that’s what you are worried about, just go on the show.
Rosaline said.
—If the vaccine opposition is a type of immune response, you can be the vaccine itself. Make some antibodies against that opinion in Korea.
“I’ll think about it today.”
Young-Joon rose from his seat.
“I’m going to head home. You should, too, Ms. Song-Mi. It’s already past working hours,” Young-Joon said to Yoo Song-Mi as he headed out of his office.
* * *
Young-Joon had come home in two weeks. He was so busy that he normally spent the night at the company, and he didn’t even go home on the weekends. It was because he thought it was a waste of time for him to go home. He brought some clothes to the closet in his office, slept on the couch, and showered in the company shower room.
“I’m going to forget my son’s face. Come home often,” said Young-Joon’s mother, who had moved here a couple of months ago.
“Don’t pressure him when he’s busy,” his father lightly criticized his mother. “Young-Joon, don’t care about us and do whatever you want to do, okay?”
“I’ll come home often now,” Young-Joon said. “Recently, I had to stay up at work because I was so busy from eradicating HIV, but I can relax a little in a few weeks.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.” His mother tapped him on his shoulder. “You have to take care of yourself. If you get sick, nothing else matters.”
Ryu Ji-Won also came home early because Young-Joon was having dinner at home. It had been a while since the whole family had a meal together.
“How strange of you to come home,” Ryu Ji-Won said like she was fascinated.
“I’m here to see if you’re studying hard.”
“Actually, I have a confession to make.”
“What is it?”
“I used your computer because mine broke when I was doing my assignment, but I broke that, too.”
“What? What kind of assignment were you doing that made you break two computers?”
“I was downloading some program…”
Ryu Ji-Won glanced at Young-Joon in a little bit of guilt, then giggled cutely.
“Sorry. I’ll make sure to fix it with my own money.”
“Isn’t that the allowance I gave you?”
“Uh… That is true… Anyway, I’m sorry. Oh right, I saw vaccine conspiracy theorists at school today.”
Ryu Ji-Won quickly switched the topic.
“Conspiracy theorists?”
“They were talking about how vaccines are dangerous, they can’t be trusted, and that AIDS will actually increase if you create something like that because they will live more promiscuously. They were petitioning.”
“How can people like that exist?” Young-Joon’s father said angrily with a frown.
“I guess they could think that way. To be honest, I felt that way in the past,” Young-Joon’s mother said. “It’s so worrisome and hard for mothers to see their baby get a shot. It’s so hard to make the decision to vaccinate them when they’re not even sick.”
“Oh honey, please don’t say that anywhere else. How can you say that when you’re Young-Joon’s mother?”
“I’m not saying I feel that way right now; I’m just saying that I understand. Mothers who raise their children without medicine don’t do it because they are bad people. What kind of mother would want to ruin their kid’s health on purpose? They think that they are doing the best they can with wrong information,” Young-Joon’s mother said. “And I think it’s possible for them to believe that. How can regular people know what vaccines are? I studied a little after Young-Joon went into biology, but it was so hard that I couldn’t understand any of it.”
“Sigh.”
“You don’t know how vaccines work, either.”
“... Actually, I’m thinking about going on TV because of that,” Young-Joon said.
“TV?”
Ryu Ji-Won’s head shot up.
“You’re going to be on TV?”
“I’ve had a lot of offers for me to go on lecture programs or talk shows. I declined all of them though. But I’m thinking about it now. I thought I’d go and explain about vaccines and AIDS.”
“Then you should do it!” Ryu Ji-Won said excitedly. “I’ll do your makeup before you go on. Split the fee? You take seven, I take three? Yes?”
“I don’t need makeup. I’m not a celebrity or anything, so why would I do that?”
“Hey, you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you go on something like that, it’ll be forever pinned in your fan club.”
Young-Joon got goosebumps on his arms when Ryu Ji-Won put it that way.
“But I haven’t decided whether to go on or not.”
“Why?”
‘A scientist should only talk about the data and evidence in their paper.’
Young-Joon swallowed his words as it was obvious they were going to be frustrated with him. But for him, it wasn’t an easy decision.
In his lifetime as a scientist, he had seen a lot of scientists get fame from things other than papers: scientists who worked on television, news columns, radio networks, and other mass media. The professor in the lab next door when he was studying at Jungyoon University was someone like that. The graduate students of that lab were abandoned; they had barely gotten any supervision from the professor, as the professor was busy going on TV and writing books that they could barely make it to the lab once a week.
The faces of his colleagues next door who were complaining as their graduation became distant kept popping up in Young-Joon’s head.
That lab barely published any papers. That professor didn’t read papers either. The research did not progress, and the professor was appealing to the public and intoxicated by his fame. To Young-Joon, that too seemed fake.
Of course, he might go on television just this once and go back to being a scientist. But the hardest part about anything was the first time, right?
‘I already changed so much because of Rosaline. But can I really give up my attitude as a scientist?’
Young-Joon was worried because he didn’t have confidence in himself.
“Whether you go on the show or not, you should do whatever you want to do. Everyone supports you,” Young-Joon’s father said.
“Yes…” Young-Joon replied.
Ring!
A new email came into his inbox.
[Hello. I’m a woman in her forties living in Seoul. I am emailing you after seeing the petition against your vaccine development at Gangnam Station.]
He clicked on the email because he was curious what kind of worries she was going to talk about. But the rest of the email was unexpected.
[My second kid is at Jungyoon Hospital because he’s sick, and there was a baby who was two years old. They had a bunch of machines hooked up, and they looked very sick. It turns out that the mother was in RCWM, so she didn’t vaccinate them or give them any medicine because she wanted to raise them without medicine. People who are in RCWM are probably trying to raise the baby in a healthy way with their own beliefs. But eventually, the baby had brain problems after they suffered from a major injury, and they have to live with a permanent disability. The mom cries every day, saying that it’s her fault. I support you, Doctor Ryu. I hope you keep going with your research no matter what people say.]
Young-Joon let out a sigh.
‘I’d rather fight Schumatix.’
He sent Secretary Yoo Song-Mi a text message.
[When you get to work tomorrow, please set a date for me to go on the show. And I have a request about the audience. I’ll call you tomorrow.]
* * *
Kim Pil-Young, a second-year history major, was petitioning at Mapo-gu. The number of participants for the temporary organization, “Group Against the Development of the HIV Vaccine”, or GAHIV, quickly grew and was now nationwide. They were even on the news a couple days ago. People at GAHIV printed that video on a huge poster and held it up wherever they went; it was a screenshot of the anchor on screen and the caption, “Group Against the Development of the HIV Vaccine.”
The number of GAHIV people gathered in Mapo-gu today was huge. There were around a hundred people as this was an important location in this movement.
“Hey you. Do you know where this is? How dare you do something like this here?” said a man in his fifties as he clicked his tongue. “This is right in front of the next-generation hospital that Doctor Ryu is running! How dare you petition something like this here?”
“Vaccines are really dangerous, sir. You must think about what kind of societal impact it will have when something like that is made.” Kim Pil-Young began to desperately convince him.
“Hey. You’re doing this here because it’s in front of the hospital, right!?!” A little female student wearing glasses interrupted.
“Isn’t this the first place that Doctor Ryu will supply the vaccine once it’s made?”
“What…”
The moment the man frowned like he was baffled, GAHIV began shouting from behind him.
“That’s right!”
“We have to petition here because it’s the hospital!”
“We are against the development of the HIV vaccine!”
Kim Pil-Young got close to the man with a pen and the petition. He said, “Sir, there is a paper that vaccines cause autism. The more developed the country, the less its citizens get vaccines. Why do you think that is? In Japan, a HPV vaccine had side effects as well. Are vaccines really okay? Do you know how vaccines work?”
“Um…”
“Like how you gain resistance if you take too many antibiotics, vaccines also…”
“Hello!”
Suddenly, a young man and woman appeared in front of Kim Pil-Young.
“We’re from SBS.[2] GAHIV is doing the petition here, right?” the woman asked.
“Yes! We are,” Kim Pil-Young said with a bright smile. “Are you interviewing us?”
“No.” The woman shook her head with a smile. “Doctor Ryu Young-Joon is going on a lecture-style program, and he is going to talk about the HIV vaccine and the infection process of AIDS, and do a live debate.”
“Pardon?”
“He asked us to fill the audience with people who are against the development of the vaccine,” she said. “If it’s alright, could you come on our show?”
1. In Korean, it’s called An-A-Ki, which stands for the Korean for raising children without medicine. It is a movement that believes in the natural healing power of the body and strives to not use modern medicine. ?
2. SBS is a famous broadcaster in Korea. ?