It's a bizarre but coherent story that makes you feel the same way as when you'd hear that your parents got sent to play with the kid who got measles so they'd get it too. But the headline confuses me: the orphans didn't give up everything. They gave up a crap institutional life in Spain in exchange for immunity to smallpox and a new better life in Mexico. Had they the agency to consent or not to their role, it's plausible many would have agreed without hesitation.
posted by fatbird at 3:58 PM on January 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

With kind respect, fatbird, the children were ages 3-9. In my experience raising children, children 3-8 just want to go HOME. It¡¯s possible that the 9 year old(s) possibly could have had the cognitive capacity to imagine a life different but better than theirs, but that stretches what I¡¯ve experienced with little ones.

Additionally, my understanding is that orphanages of that era were often a place where children were sent for short-term care ¡ª during times of parental illness or poverty ¡ª and were later reunited with their families.

I would think a more compassionate choice would have been to transport whole families with the right-aged children, offering the same benefits. The idea of sending children so young away for such a purpose is emotionally horrific, and I can see wanting to ease some of that compassionate response with the possibility of their consent and happiness at the event, but I doubt that was was their response.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:41 PM on January 16, 2021 [19 favorites]

It both sucks and is incredibly on-brand for Western Civilization that we don't seem to know the names or fates of any of the 22 children. Maybe there's more information out there somewhere.
posted by glonous keming at 4:43 PM on January 16, 2021 [21 favorites]

If they wanted to distribute cowpox, why didn't they just send cows? Columbus had transported cows to the Americas way back in 1493.
posted by JackFlash at 4:54 PM on January 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

This is fascinating. I'd known Jenner did his "clinical trials" on children (I believe also orphans)--including a challenge test where he deliberately exposed them to smallpox to see if it worked. This seems comparatively benign I guess?

Then to reach the Philippines:

He picked up a few dozen more boys in the town, but instead of finding orphans, he hired boys from various families, essentially renting them as vaccine mules for the journey to Asia.

Somewhat different attitudes . . . .
posted by mark k at 5:00 PM on January 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

children 3-8 just want to go HOME

Okay, I get that. I was reacting to the headline implying that they died on the voyage over, by design. I would note that the person running the orphanage accompanied them, which I think would do a lot to assuage feelings of being removed from their home and sent away.
posted by fatbird at 5:15 PM on January 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I would note that the person running the orphanage accompanied them

It¡¯s a fair point, and indeed it is sometimes hard to look at the past through my own lens and not feel levels of sorrow and outrage. Have been trying to stifle the urge to say, ¡°...and I bet the person running the orphanage got paid...¡± and have lost that battle. Still makes my heart hurt.

Thanks for taking my response to your comments with kindness.
posted by Silvery Fish at 6:23 PM on January 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Dr. Orpheus: It's powered by [22] FORSAKEN CHILD[REN]?
posted by ckape at 7:18 PM on January 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

So the person running the orphanage was Isabel Zendal Gomez, and this back and forth made me Google her. There seems to be quite a bit more about her in Spanish, but a fascinating story--entwined with that of the orphans of course--and certainly willing to go her own way despite being a single women. Edward Jenner said of her I don't imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this. According to the link her main condition for agreeing to go was that she receive the vaccine so she could accompany her charges. She eventually disembarked to start a new life in the Americas.
posted by mark k at 7:22 PM on January 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

I'm sorry, fatbird, are you really trying to argue that using a group of 3-9 year old orphans< cowpox so they can be human vaccine mules is about as ethical as parents choosing to expose their children to a disease?

The fact that standards for ethical research were different in 1803 doesn't change the fact that using a group of especially vulnerable 3-9 year old boys to vaccinate against a disease that Spanish imperialism brought to vulnerable subjugated populations is deeply unethical. There is no meaningful way to consent to that.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:37 PM on January 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm not trying to argue anything at all, just observing the frission that occurred on reading this, and reflecting on how it probably seemed like a reasonable proposition, given the disposability of orphans at the time, even though it's a self-evidently terrible abuse to us. Deliberately exposing your child to measles today seems terrible, and only reasonable a century ago given the limitations of vaccinations. But just thinking about it is... jarring.

There probably is an interesting argument around the moral philosophy of live vaccine mules; I suspect most of those arguments would be cured if the orphans and their guardian had things clearly explained to them and, in some reasonable sense, gave informed consent to be vaccine mules, and were adequately compensated at the end of the trip (and adequate compensation doesn't cure the informed consent problem).
posted by fatbird at 9:34 PM on January 16, 2021

the orphans didn't give up everything. They gave up a crap institutional life in Spain in exchange for immunity to smallpox and a new better life in Mexico.

We don't know the names or subsequent stories of any of the orphans. We can't assume that they did in fact have a better life in Mexico. For comparison, here are a few of the stories of the British orphans who were sent to a 'better life' in Australia.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:23 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

incredibly on-brand for Western Civilization that we don't seem to know the names or fates of any of the 22 children

Do non-Western civilizations typically treat their orphans comparatively better, or is this just rhetorical flair? Honest question as a layperson interested in anthropology.
posted by daveliepmann at 2:13 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

We do know the names of the children of the Expedici¨®n Balmis (Vicente, Pascual, Mart¨ªn, Juan Francisco, Tom¨¢s, Juan Antonio, Jos¨¦ Jorge, Antonio, Francisco, Clemente, Manuel Mar¨ªa, Jos¨¦ Manuel, Domingo, Andr¨¦s, Jos¨¦, Vicente, C¨¢ndido, Francisco, Ger¨®nimo, Jacinto, Benito and Pascual), and in fact there are plaques with their names (scroll down) on a memorial in A Coru?a where they were from.

The expedition has been receiving a lot of attention lately, so much that the Spanish Army's response to covid-19 has been dubbed "Operaci¨®n Balmis". In a less successful note, the regional government of Madrid spent a lot of money to build a warehouse for patients of covid and named it Hospital de Emergencias Enfermera Isabel Zendal.
posted by sukeban at 4:50 AM on January 17, 2021 [26 favorites]

I knew none of this, thank you for posting- a very interesting story and one I will share with my clinical-worker friends.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:44 AM on January 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

This article has given me an appreciation of what is possible because of modern infrastructure. Not having to cross the ocean in a ship, refrigeration, consent in medical research! As horrifying as the solution was, I do have to marvel at the problem solving and tenacity.
posted by ellerhodes at 7:23 AM on January 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think the idea that children are not miniature adults is still sinking in.

My dad got TB in 1952 and the army sent him to Colorado for treatment. His pregnant French wife and son boarded a transatlantic liner a week later and she became very ill and died so crew locked the room with my half-brother and his mom in it for the rest of the crossing because they didn't know what his mom died of. He was 4.

That seems pretty insensitive and it's also not so long ago, but when that was told to me I was 4 and my mom was pregnant and had been in the hospital for a couple weeks and that was not what I needed to hear. Maybe that was supposed to help me understand why my dad was being a bad parent.

I just figured that last part out after reading this. Thanks! I mean that.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 8:21 AM on January 17, 2021 [7 favorites]

In this case, they had to use children because by the 1800s children were the only population in Europe that hadn't already been exposed to cowpox (by vaccination) or smallpox (by infection). By that time, smallpox was a childhood disease.
posted by sukeban at 9:03 AM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

And the Today, Explained podcast just covered this. I don't think it adds a ton from the article, but the author does say the children were apparently foundlings--not, as speculated above, non-orphans in short term care with known parents and relatives.

At least for me I think the framing ("given cowpox" and the phrase "gave up everything") initially had me thinking of this as something adjacent to the Tuskegee syphilis abomination. People made/left sick for the supposed greater good. This crossed some wires for me, in terms of ethical intuition.

When in fact the medical part of this was basically vaccinating them, same as you would anyone else who had access to good medical care at the time. Even the reinfection part was normal. That was how you distributed the vaccine then. The expedition could also be described as "The orphan whose vaccination saved a continent" without increasing the hyperbole content.

There are ethical issue still, but mostly around transportation. Sea voyages were risky and malaria and yellow fever were prevalent in the region--and while less fatal to children than adults still not great. But the medical part should have been done anyway, at least their inoculation. The reinfection wouldn't match good standards.

Have been trying to stifle the urge to say, ¡°...and I bet the person running the orphanage got paid...¡± and have lost that battle.

I do think this is a modern cash-economy framing and probably anachronistic. The person running the orphanage was a single (maybe widowed?) mother who stayed in the Americas with her son. I doubt she had the social capital to profit from this either--it certainly doesn't seem like some Dickensian move where the main intent was to profit from the orphans monetarily and with absolute disregard for their welfare.

Still the question is could they have used adults?

In this case, they had to use children because by the 1800s children were the only population in Europe that hadn't already been exposed to cowpox (by vaccination) or smallpox (by infection). By that time, smallpox was a childhood disease.

So this is interesting but the article (which focuses on London) isn't saying all adults were exposed, even their. And in fact Isabel Zendal, the adult accompanying the orphans, was also vaccinated only at the time of the voyage. So I think to some extent the motivation *was* convenience--it was easier to find and coordinate a couple dozen kids than to try and recruit adults.
posted by mark k at 3:38 PM on January 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

Point taken, but try searching for information on patterns of smallpox infection in 1700s -1800s Spain in the English language. I posted that article because it looked to me readable, and except for a comparatively earlier migration of people from the countryside to the cities because of the industrial revolution I don't think it would've been too different in France or Spain. It does focus on the 1700s and the Balmis expedition happened in 1803-5, though.
posted by sukeban at 12:00 AM on January 18, 2021

This was really fascinating, thanks
posted by fever-trees at 3:36 PM on January 19, 2021