Science against the People

Claiming that they were a source of syphilis infection, the U.S. Navy removed doorknobs from a number of battleships during World War I.¹ Like many members of the nonscientific public, even the military shared in the “hysteria” over venereal infection during the first two decades of this century. Although the fear of doorknobs was misplaced, worries about venereal disease were not completely irrational. As late as 1910, about 25 percent of all blind persons in the United States had lost their sight through venereal insontium, blindness of the newborn.² Today, instead of venereal disease, AIDS is perhaps the greater object