Dr. Peter Hotez is the Pontifex Maximus of the Vaccine Cult, despite his personal presentation always being in shambles. Like many exalted institutional leaders in America today, Dr. Hotez invariably leaves the critical viewer wondering how he became so influential.
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One thing that Hotez does seem to understand is that facts alone are not sufficient to compel belief in something. For people to believe in a proposition, it must appeal to their emotional yearnings and attachments, and not only to their interest in factual reality. Thus, Hotez understands that it’s not enough to talk about vaccines as substances for inducing the immune system to recognize pathogens and neutralize them before they cause severe illness. Getting into the weeds about “the science” of vaccines is complex, technical, and—if done properly—raises questions about the reality of their safety and efficacy. As Hotez understands, it’s far more persuasive to proclaim unequivocally that vaccines are the SAVIORS of mankind.
Recently Hotez published a paper titled Vaccine Science Diplomacy and “The Phenomenon of Man” in which he presents a philosophical approach that could help vaccine ambassadors to form alliances with leaders of Catholic institutions. As he puts it in the Abstract:
The central tenets of international scientific collaborations leading to the development, testing, and the equitable distribution vaccines to combat poliomyelitis, smallpox, COVID-19, and other devasting infections, first accelerated in the mid-twentieth century. The genesis of vaccine science diplomacy also coincides with the publication of Le Phénomène Humain (The Phenomenon of Man) shortly after the death of its author, the French Jesuit priest and scientist, Dr. Teilhard de Jardin. Several tenets of Teilhard’s posthumous essay, including our collective consciousness, and the “conjugated faces” of science and religion, are relevant to a modern vaccine diplomacy framework, even if Teilhard may not have specifically addressed vaccines in his writings. This could also include the potential for arriving at an “omega point” through international scientific collaboration and joint vaccine development, while simultaneously avoiding the destructive forces of anti-vaccine or anti-science activism. Collaborations between the Vatican, Catholic research universities and institutions; and leaders of the Catholic-majority nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in an integrated framework might accelerate these activities as they apply to both pandemic threats and neglected diseases of poverty.
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With this paper, Hotez implicitly touches on the difficult question of why a benevolent God would include in his Creation pathogens against which the human immune system is inadequate. For centuries, humans (including the ranking clergy of the Catholic Church) perceived illnesses such as the plague to be a possible expression of God’s wrath.
Since the development of modern medical science, the church has tended to adopt the position that God equipped man with sufficient reason and understanding to overcome nature’s antagonistic elements. It is in this line of thinking that Hotez sees an avenue for vaccine ambassadors to form alliances with Catholic institutions.
Hotez’s model for “conjugating the faces of science and religion” is the French Jesuit priest, philosopher, geologist, and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who proposed an elaborate and controversial synthesis of Darwinian evolutionary theory with Catholic theology.
It’s not clear from Hotez’s paper whether he finds Teilhard de Chardin’s synthesis to be persuasive. I suspect that his objective with the paper is to appeal to Pope Francis, who has expressed positive interest in Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas (as did Pope Benedict XVI).
