Reading Time: 96 Minutes
Title: Fighting for Freedom
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 8
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds
Genre: Crossover, Dimension Travel, Family, Future Fic / Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): GEN
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Hate Speech, Major Character Death, Slavery, Torture, Violence-Graphic, Violence-Against Children/Child Abuse, Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Mind control, Character Bashing, Non-consensual Drug Use, Discussion of Vaccine Hesitancy, and the rise of Conspiracy Theories, Discussion of Unethical Medical Research/Experimentation
Author Note: British spellings and grammar conventions. Minor crossovers for Eureka, JAG, Criminal Minds and Leverage
Beta: Aussiefan70
Word Count: 130,000
Summary: Time is running out for Earth to contain a threat of apocalyptic proportions seeking to enslave its entire population by creating a planet of mindless zombies. Despite the gravity of the threat, the Earth and its interplanetary allies have banded together, determined to thwart it, but they encounter resistance from an unexpected quarter, forcing a rejig of a part of their plan. Meanwhile, Homeworld Command’s plan to bring down The Trust once and for all is yielding an impressive amount of raw data when a mysterious Goa’uld disrupts their operation and threatens the life of Tali DiNozzo in Atlantis.
Artist: Germankitty
Chapter 9
Dr O’Shea checked the mirror, deciding she was presentable. She left Vinia back in the VIP quarters, where Airman Jaida Rawlins, her protection detail assigned to accompany her during her visit, would keep the teen company, because the contingent from Atlantis, which included Carolyn Lam, Bill Lee, Daniel Jackson, Lavinia and herself, was going to stay tonight at the SCG. She smiled at the young airman in recognition of the popcorn and snacks she’d brought, as well as a pile of movies on DVD.
Aoife was asked to attend the special committee meeting, which was supposed to hammer out the finer details of the vaccine program. The request for her attendance was initially unexpected since she was a psychologist, not a doctor or an epidemiologist. However, Daniel explained the mission had hit an unforeseen snag when the US politicos suddenly decided that informed consent must be obtained from those known anti-vaxxers in the US before they could give them the vaccine which would prevent them from becoming mindless zombies. The rest of the population was apparently assumed to have already given their consent because they had been vaccinated previously.
Quite frankly, Aoife thought it was a pile of donkey-shite that they were worrying about conspiracy nuts who thought that vaccines contained microchips so governments could track them when they were already carrying smart phones that could track people by commercial aps on their phones. Not just the government, either, but sexual predators, stalkers and abusive domestic partners. Still, what could you expect from a bunch of spineless politicos, primarily worried about losing their seats in Congress, while everyone else was scared witless about the whole damned planet being zombified.
Now Aoife hardly considered herself an expert on vaccine hesitancy, so she’d spent the hours between arriving back from the Dixons’ residence and now, researching and pulling some stuff together for a presentation. She understood the psychology that underpinned why people swallowed these conspiracy theories, but truthfully, she had very little patience for the gombeens peddling this shite to the masses. The microchip myth was a good example of how the education system had failed too many of its citizens. Vials of vaccine, on average, held between 0.3 and 0.5 millilitres of liquid, ruling out the possibility of there being any space, even for the most basic microelectronics. Yet it didn’t stop claims that the ‘government’ used vaccines to inject 5G microchips into people.
As she made her way up to the meeting, she thought about Vinia. She’d been rather quiet and depressed after the failure of their day spent with her mirror father’s family, and Aoife had intended to spend time with her tonight, offering her support. Unfortunately, she’d been called in to attend the late NaDS meeting but thankfully, Vinia seemed to be less depressed than she had been this afternoon. The teenager told her that she’d been on a secret mission with General O’Neill, but she wasn’t permitted to tell anyone what it was. Aoife was happy he’d spent some time with the young teenager, as he was extremely busy right now. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he was good with kids, and they liked him too, so hanging out together probably had done them both some good.
Aoife hoped Jaida and Vinia had a better night watching movies than the meeting she was going to; discussing the Tin-foil brigade and how a boatload of grifters saw them coming was not her idea of a fun night out.
~o0o~
Jack felt calmer after his time on the surface of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Davina Dixon was a good kid, and he wished things had worked out differently for her. Although Dr Heng had averred from the outset that even if it were possible for Davinia to live with Dave and his family, it may well prove to be too traumatic for her to be separated from the rest of the kids, who in the months spent together at Area 52 in the underground tunnels, had formed an ad hoc but, tightly knit family unit. One which Thora, Paula and Heather, who were also an integral part of the unorthodox family forged by their shared trauma.
Dr Heng warned Jack from the outset that for the older ones, they might all need to live in close proximity to each other for an extended period of time. After their discussions, Jack noted on numerous occasions how Josh, Gia and Vinia tended to hover over the little ones. To anyone who didn’t know their background, it might appear overbearing or obsessive behaviour, but when you understood what they’d lived through, it made absolute sense.
Jack was thinking of how these ten kids, ranging from babies right up to adolescents, were a family and had drawn their new guardians into their extended family as well. That triggered a memory of when he’d taken Baby Sarah to visit his ex-wife. While there, they explained to her about the MCD –238β compound and that they possessed a vaccine to counteract its effects. Lauren expressed surprise that they planned a secret mass vaccination program for the entire population of Earth without first obtaining people’s informed consent. Frankly, Jack had been rather bemused by her response. People in the Armed Forces, as well as individuals in the SGC, both civilian and service personnel, were inoculated for an absolute shit ton of diseases, viruses and infectious agents. He knew better than anyone how many scary illnesses they were exposed to, like the Ori Plague or that hellacious plague he’d caught from the Ancient, Aianna down in Antarctica years ago.
He almost didn’t make it! The Ancients’ plague had been a horrific experience, and he didn’t include what happened during his recovery either. Why would anyone choose to go through something like that if it could be avoided? And from what he knew about the effects of Lucius Lavin’s cursed MCD –238β compound, he hoped no one else had to experience having their free will usurped by that damn stuff. Like Teyla, Miko, Monique and the Winyans, most little more than girls when they’d been turned into sexual slaves by Lucius Lavin. So, no, Jack honestly couldn’t see any issue in unilaterally vaccinating the whole planet; it wasn’t as if Lavin and Shen, if she followed her evil plan as she had in the alternate reality, had asked if it was okay to steal people’s free will and turn them into mindless slaves.
To himself and Paula, it seemed a complete no-brainer. He read every report of how easily Atlantis’ base security had been breached. He’d listen to everyone of the victims’ court testimonies of how it felt to be unable to resist orders given to them after they’d been infected by the insidious MCD–238β compound. Paula had seen it up close and personal and paid a horrific price. She’d been forced to leave her husband and colleagues behind due to the zombie-like effects and the monstrous ambitions of the self-styled Emperor Shen Xiaoyi, who’d overthrown every government on Earth, her own included.
Neither had even the slightest qualms about administering the MCD –238β vaccine, nor did anyone else involved in manufacturing sufficient doses in time to save their planet. Unfortunately, like Sarah…erm Lauren, his ex-wife, when President Walsh had, on advice of his political advisors, read in the “Gang of Eight,” like Lauren, they had qualms too. A group of eight democratically elected officials responsible for receiving and reviewing sensitive top-secret national security briefings had doubts. Despite being briefed about the shit-scary intel that graphically outlined the risk to planetary security, they failed to grasp the existential nature of the threat it posed. Shen’s scientists had likely had years to weaponise the compound for mass distribution around the globe. Or potentially on other planets as soon as China received the 304 Battle Cruiser, Sun Tzu, which made it absolutely critical to inoculate the entire population with the MCD–238β vaccines ASAP.
Justifiably proud of Homeworld’s astonishing manufacturing feat of producing vaccines for everyone on Earth, when the Gang of Eight had a conniption, O’Neill hadn’t seen that coming. But then again, who would have predicted that a bunch of anti-vaxxers would turn some of the highest ranked elected representatives of one of the three equal branches of the US government into a bunch of spineless jellyfish? If Tony were here now, he’d no doubt quip sardonically that he did not have that on his bingo card!
The Gang of Eight – made up of the Speaker of the House, plus the Majority and Minority Leaders of the House and Senate, and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had strenuously objected on ethical grounds to Homeworld wanting to administer a simple and effective vaccine to the US population without getting consent. Never mind that in all their exhaustive trials, plus all the research from those already vaccinated (some of them for years), the vaccine had proved to have no known side effects except… ya know, resistance to mind control.
Yeah, Jack understood how the congressional intelligence committee played a crucial role, overseeing the intelligence activities of the United States government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies. That said, O’Neill vehemently opposed their decision that, for those who didn’t agree with vaccines, it was imperative that Homeworld Command obtain their informed consent, or else exclude them from the vaccine program.
He honestly didn’t understand how the hell that was supposed to work, give their absolute need for secrecy, not even when he’d wrongly assumed they were talking about maybe fifty thousand Americans maximum, who refused vaccinations. Now that he knew the proportion was way higher than he’d anticipated, Jack realised interning them in camps would be a nightmare but even more necessary than before, since he didn’t see how they could acquire the informed consent the Gang of Eight demanded. This just left one option: mass incarceration, preferably off-world, where they couldn’t be used against them. They were in deep shit and needed to come up with a strategy… and damn fast too!
As the head of Homeworld Command, Jack thought the Gang of Eight were totally and absolutely NUTS! But he was ‘career’ military, so he was accustomed to following orders (even when they were dumbass ones) and, to some degree, accustomed to finding workarounds. He’d miscalculated badly, as Drs Yap and Rasmussen pointed out. After all, he’d assumed that there couldn’t be that many anti-vaxxers because, surely, everyone had enough brain cells to understand that vaccines for life-threatening illnesses had eradicated horrific diseases like smallpox and polio. No one died of diphtheria anymore, and measles deaths were negligible (or they used to be before that shonky study). .
It seemed totally insane to Jack that the Gang of Eight didn’t seem to have an issue with secretly inoculating most of the planet’s population, rationalising it was okay because they were already vaccinated for a shit ton of other diseases and therefore had already given consent. Yet baulked over protecting people who objected to being vaccinated. Not all of the members had objected; some were happy enough to sign off on vaccinating everyone on the planet, friend or foe, asap! Hell, they wanted to know how soon they, their families and staffers could get the jab.
No, it had never crossed his mind that just because a small proportion of people considered vaccines evil and refuse them based on unfounded conspiracy theories. Nor did he think for a moment that the Gang of Eight (technically 5 of the 8) would order them to obtain permission from the ‘vaccine hesitant crowd’ due to ethical considerations. Up until this point, Jack hadn’t truly understood the scope of the problem, nor did he think that he would be ordered to obtain ‘informed consent for these whack-jobs because of ETHICS!
Was it ethical for badly informed adults to make life and death decisions for their kids regarding life-threatening diseases, and at the same time, endanger the rest of the population? Especially babies who were too young to be vaccinated, individuals who were medically unable to be vaccinated or possessed a crappy immune system? Particularly when part of the vaccine hesitancy hysteria was due to flawed, corrupt or falsified data by researchers whose ethics were not above reproach, yet they and their zealous adherents had the unmitigated gall to question other researchers’ ethics when they themselves were demonstrably corrupt. And the bottom line was that pandering to a bunch of anti-vaxxers handed then dangerous powers that could help Ambassador Shen take over the world.
Still, they had to accept that President Walsh wouldn’t overrule the Gang of Eight. Jack recalled when former President Hayes repeatedly acceded to Congressional and Senate oversight committees and the International Oversight Committees, when it would have been a helluva lot safer for the world to ignore them. It was also how General Hammond was replaced by a civilian commander of the SGC. Unfortunately, Dr Weir’s chief qualification was diplomacy and treaty negotiation, when the hard truth was that the Goa’uld, like Anubis and Baal, the Ori and the Wraith never gave a rat’s ass about negotiating peaceful settlements. They sought annihilation, capitulation, or obliteration of Planet Earth. Honestly, it was a miracle that the Earth hadn’t been blown up or enslaved years ago!
Jack was sadly becoming accustomed to the sheer idiocy of politics and the clowns who took part in the circus for their own selfish reasons. Due to his stint at the SCG, before he took over as the director of Homeworld Command, he bumped up against those clowns, grifters and narcissistic power-hungry fools 365 days a year. So, he’d been prepared to suck it up and lock down every last one of the crazies, um, vaccine objectors in quarantine at places like Guantanamo Bay until after the threat was over and Shen Xiaoyi had been thwarted. He’d started spying out sites where these whack jobs could be housed safely, mostly on US military sites, planning on fitting out barracks and insta-camps like the ones they’d set up on their Beta, Delta and Gamma sites, using modern Quonset huts and prefab buildings that they could beam people to. He’d started figuring out how many troops would be needed to guard them and maintain order because Jack recognised they were unlikely to be cooperative.
They had already requested that the Army Corps of Engineers draw up plans that suddenly seemed woefully insufficient for the numbers they’d initially estimated, with input from the respective engineering corps of the other branches of the military, who had been working together for the past few days. It wasn’t until now that Jack realised just how egregiously he’d underestimated the number of anti-vaxxers currently in the US. Suddenly he was left scrambling to revise the quarantine strategy. They were in deep shit!
Jack admitted he’d dropped the ball, and he willingly admitted it. He’d wrongly assumed that after the Lancet Journal finally, twelve years after publishing Wakefield’s study, comprehensively denounced the study’s claim that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children, it would stop the mass hysteria. He foolishly thought that, after it was debunked by impeccable and substantive research from sources across the globe, it would calm the hysterical fears of the public.
Quite literally, the main objection by many of these tin-foil hat wearers was that vaccines were an evil plot by BIG PHARMA, which had a vested interest in pushing vaccines. Yet the author himself owned patents for single vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella, giving him a vested financial interest in falsely claiming the MMR vaccine caused Autism. If people abandoned the three-in-one vaccine in favour of single doses for all three childhood diseases, because of his claims, he stood to make a fortune. The irony was not lost on Jack that Wakefield had been guilty of that which he accused his fellow scientists of being paid shills for the drug companies, except HE was the paid shill in this case, who stood financially to benefit from the publication of his dodgy paper. It was called projection, plus, as Sam pointed out, funding for the study was paid by lawyers who were suing the vaccine producers for damages. Their claim was that their clients’ children developed Autism after getting the MMR vaccine. Yet that crucial fact was not declared either before publication, which scientific ethics demanded.
With so much evidence of corruption, even before looking at the research which failed to replicate his claims, Jack was stunned that people still clung to the discredited claims of someone with a personal axe to grind, who’d failed to disclose it. The clung to their beliefs long after the findings had been refuted by most of Wakefield’s research partners who’d published the dodgy study in the first place. Back in 2012, Sam was so sure that The Lancet’s historic renunciation (given the weight of their scientific authority), would mark the end of the shameful black eye for scientific research of a flawed piece of research leading to measles outbreaks once again reappearing in pockets around the globe when vaccines were readily available to prevent it. She’d been wrong!
Instead, it seemed the opposite had occurred; people had their heels in, too invested in the anti-vaccine stance they’d adopted to admit they’d been conned. Bizarrely, their numbers appeared to have grown exponentially, possibly as conjecture about the origins of the Priory Plague refused to die down, which had come out of nowhere, spreading like wildfire across the globe. Some conspiracy theorists were quick to blame it on shadowy plots by Big Pharma wanting to make even more obscene profits.
Now that same paranoia posed an existential threat to Homeworld’s ability to fight Shen and her backers with a truly terrifying plot that may or may not include her government. And right now, they were assuming the worst because it was the only responsible thing to do. If they were wrong and she was a renegade, they could soothe ruffled diplomatic feathers in the Chinese government later – if they thwarted her. If not, it wouldn’t matter!
The director of Homeworld Command couldn’t help wondering what his Jaffa friend Teal’c would make of this crazy directive by the Gang of Eight. Would he think that President Walsh refusing to overrule their foolish directive with an Executive Order, despite these anti-vaxxers threatening not just national security but the security of the entire planet was a pathetic cope-out? Probably, because it was and Teal’c was nothing if not a straight shooter who could see into the heart of an individual and call it like it was.
His Jaffa friend would probably be thoroughly disgusted at their shortsightedness. No, damn it, call it what it really was! An elite group of Congressional committee members, trusted to be read in on the highest-level existential threat that the world faced. Credible, top-secret intel about the entire planet being enslaved by a narcissistic monster who possessed aspirations to take over Earth and other worlds, and they’d decided that the ethics of vaccinating a group of people who disagreed with vaccines was more important than the continued survival of some eight billion humans. It was batshit crazy, but he supposed there’d also been plenty of political machinations among the different factions within the Jaffa, as schisms and sectarianism raged in their own march towards self-determination and freedom. Just maybe he would be less shocked by this situation than Jack was.
The Jaffa nation was still in its infancy; the same could not be said for countries such as the US and the UK though. It seemed people, a generation or two removed from the horrors of polio and other epidemics, such as measles, had become lazy, complacent and wilfully blind. Too many people had become gullible to the influence of what his grandfather would call snake oil salesmen. With all that Teal’c had sacrificed over the years, which truly was incalculable, Jack really couldn’t blame him if he decided that Earth didn’t deserve the help of the Jaffa to deal with this latest threat by Shen.
The former First Prime of Apophis had been steadfast in his support of Earth. Ever since he’d first saved SG-1’s sixes back on Chuluk, trying to free Daniel’s Abydonian wife, Sha’re, and her brother, Skaare. Unfortunately, the pair had been taken as hosts for Apophis’ queen, Amonet and his son Korel, but Teal’c saved them and many other lives that day that Apophis had ordered to be killed. On that first encounter on Chuluk, Teal’c had publicly defied Apophis, joining the nascent resistance offered by Jack and the SCG. His loyalty had come at a great personal cost to him and his family.
After leaving the SGC, having fought alongside them to defeat the Goa’uld and the Ori, before finally returning to be with his own people, their friend and brother immediately offered to help when Earth was imperilled by Ambassador Shen’s plans to create a world of mindless slaves. The truth was that he’d been far more stalwart in defending Earth from its enemies than many of the US government’s elected officials would ever be. So if Teal’c and his fellow Jaffa didn’t throw in the towel and tell the people of Earth to fight their own battles, Jack couldn’t help but wonder.
If given the opportunity, exactly how might Teal’c view a group of mealy-mouthed politicians with their rat-like cunning, whose chief concern seemed to be how these inward-looking anti-vaxxers might cause harm to their jobs? Not if they failed to prevent the whole world from becoming slaves, but should they succeed in saving the planet by giving vaccines to everyone, even those who didn’t believe in them? He would probably personally zat the bastards three times, and Jack would help him!
Given the dire nature of the threat, it was Jack O’Neill’s personal belief that the President should have told the Gang of Eight to pull their fucking heads in and let Homeworld vaccinate the tin foil hat brigade, along with everyone else. Why should they get special treatment? It was imperative not to tip Shen off that they knew what she had planned, and it was no longer conjecture; they had highly credible intel from inside China indicating she already had plans in place and was only awaiting the delivery of the Sun Tzu. Their informants had informed them she intended to appropriate the 304 Daedalus-Class warship immediately after Stargate Command handed it over to the Chinese Government. Hence, they planned to delay the handover as long as they could.
As for telling the Gang of Eight to piss off and vaccinate everyone anyway, Jack reckoned there was already a precedent that had been set. When the Priors had released the Ori Plague on Earth, and over five thousand people had been infected worldwide in a couple of days, many people died before they could save them. Of those they did save, as civilians, those survivors were not informed where the plague originated or the exact nature of the treatment which saved their lives, since it involved highly classified intel that had been deemed too explosive for the general public to cope with. Non-vaccination, given the death rate of the Ori plague, was never up for debate.
He couldn’t see the difference between that and this situation, except that no one would die from being drugged by the monstrous mind-controlling drug. Yet being forced to live out your life with no free will, ordered to do things that go against your most basic beliefs and morals, like killing innocent people? How was that a better scenario than dying?
Jack was already seated in the conference room above the SGC complex in NORAD’s facilities as participants started trickling in. Most looked weary, having attended the meetings for much of the day, and he was curious how Aoife would approach the subject, particularly after being put on the spot with so little time to prepare. Somehow, he expected the tiny Irishwoman to rise to the occasion; in some respects, she reminded him a little of Janet Fraser, Cassie’s adopted mom, who had been a good friend.
Inevitably, that comparison brought back endless conversations SG-1 had over the years, often over a cup of coffee or, in Teal’c’s case, herbal tea as he never touched alcohol or caffeine in the commissary with Janet. They’d settle in, debating why people would reject vaccines that saved lives, because their Jaffa teammate had always been fascinated by the subject. Frankly, no one on base, not even Janet, truly understood what was at stake for their Jaffa teammate, who genuinely couldn’t understand why anyone would reject them a chance to avoid a deadly disease.
Initially, his interest in the subject seemed like just another of many topics he was intensely curious about, after he joined SG-1 to fight against the Goa’uld oppression of his people. Everyone probably put his obsession with vaccines down to Teal’c wanting to learn as much as he could about his allies, or thought he was bored out of his mind, which was a reasonable theory. Confined to the SGC base, due to his symbiote and therefore viewed as a security risk, the powers that be ruled that he was not permitted to leave the SGC without his team members. An edict that meant he spent a lot of his free time in his quarters, immersing himself in learning as much as possible about his allies and their strange ways. Vaccination had been just one of many areas that interested the big guy, and he briefly thought about Jonas Quinn and his fascination with the cable weather station. He would watch it for hours, but Jonas failed to see the brilliance of The Simpsons!
Initially, Jack had rationalised Teal’c’s fascination with vaccines and immunity, especially herd immunity as the immunologists called it, was all so foreign to the Jaffa race. This was due to the larval Goa’uld each adult Jaffa (both male and female) carried within them, as living incubators for the Goa’ulds’ snakey little offspring. In return, they gave the Jaffa extraordinary health and longevity because the Goa’uld infants were able to heal grievous injuries and serious illness. Diseases like scarlet fever, which would kill other humanoid races possessing the equivalent level of medicine as Teal’c’s people. Yet thanks to their symbiote, they were quickly healed and experienced a significantly longer life span than the average human, not because the Goa’uld had altruistic concerns for the Jaffa. Healing their host was a purely selfish act since, without a host, the Goa’uld larva could not survive either.
That was why very early on, Jack assumed Teal’c’s interest in Earth medicine, including vaccination, was simple curiosity. That was until they visited a planet called Pangar and were offered a miracle substance called Tretonin. It gave users amazing health and longevity, but most excitingly, it possessed the power to heal users of serious diseases and life-threatening injuries, similar to a Goa’uld but without any excess baggage in the form of a prim’tah. Jack was pretty bummed that they didn’t known about the wonder drug a few months before, when Daniel had saved an entire planet and ended up near death from radiation sickness and Oma Desal helped him to ascend to a higher plane of existence.
At the time, it all felt too good to be true to Jack, and it was! It turned out that Tretonin came from Goa’uld symbiotes. Not that he had issues about using those snakes, but the Goa’uld Queen they had in captivity was dying, so there would be no new larval Goa’uld spawned, which meant the Tretonin would soon be gone too, and Pangarans who were taking it would die as well. When the SGC notified the Tok’ra of the wonder substance, as they were obliged to under the Two Peoples’ Treaty regarding technological discoveries, they learned the Queen was not Goa’uld; she was the Tok’ra Queen, Egeria, who’d fought the Goa’uld and given birth to the Tok’ra race. Sadly, they couldn’t save Egeria, though the Tok’ra were savvy enough to realise that if they could create a synthetic form of Tretonin, many of the Jaffa could be persuaded to defect from the Goa’uld and join the resistance to defeat their former masters.
From that point on, Teal’c became truly obsessive, wanting to learn about common diseases such as Scarlet Fever, Rheumatic Fever, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Measles, Septicaemia, acute appendicitis, meningitis, and that was just the start. He wanted to learn about Smallpox, Dengue Fever, Cholera, Polio, Tetanus and insect-borne diseases such as Malaria. Then, when he’d heard Carolyn mention something to Alex about him surviving the Black Plague when the Jaffa was on Atlantis, he hounded the guy relentlessly, wanting to know how he’d survived. Just like he pestered Janet Frasier and then, after her death, her replacement, Dr Jana Brightman, and then Carolyn Lam, whom Jack appointed when he transferred to Homeworld Command.
People assumed O’Neill had hired the SGC’s first civilian Chief Medical Officer, either as a favour to his friend and successor or to help mend the relationship with her father, General Hank Landry. Neither reason was correct. The reason was that Dr Lam had previously worked at the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta. She was an excellent candidate to take over as Stargate Control’s CMO, as she was already highly experienced and knowledgeable in infectious diseases, and infectious agents were a regular occurrence at the SGC. His decision to hire her would soon be validated when the Ori plague hit the SCG. However, there was a second reason he’d thought Lam would be a great fit for the job. Knowing how obsessed Teal’c had become with childhood diseases, including vaccines, Dr Lam was uniquely qualified to answer his questions. Jack also hoped that when he hired her, the SGC could help the Jaffa Nations set up vaccine programs for the Rebel Jaffa already using Tretonin.
Of course, aside from his teammates and the three Chief Medical Officers: Fraser, Brightman and Lam, no one could fathom why Teal’c developed such an all-consuming fascination with diseases. Probably because initially, he still had Junior to keep him healthy, although his former wife Drey’auc died following the maturation of her Goa’uld symbiote. Rather than make herself beholden to them, she refused to serve as an incubator to another infant Goa’uld, choosing instead to die free of the Goa’uld’s oppression. In a bitter twist of fate, it occurred only a few short months before SG-1 stumbled across the Pangarians and Tretonin. Her death hit Teal’c and their son Rya’c very hard, creating an emotional gulf between them. Tretonin had now freed Jaffa from their dependence on Goa’ulds, but tragically, it came too late for Drey’auc and many other Jaffa.
Jack understood how his former wife’s death weighed heavily on his friend, but most didn’t understand Teal’c’s continuing obsession with infectious diseases. Soon, the joint research team would be ready to mass-produce the Tretonin, having figured out how to synthesise the chemical components, so that Jaffa, who still had symbiotes, would no longer need to rely on them to live. Yet, despite such a wonderful breakthrough for his people, Teal’c continued to act like a junkyard dog, guarding a desiccated old bone. The friend followed the controversies over children’s MMR vaccinations closely and continued quizzing his teammates at every opportunity over anything to do with vaccines.
Jack doubted that even Sam or Danny fully understood why, but the answer was simple enough. Teal’c was aggressively future-planning for the time to come when the Jaffa would not be forced to rely on Tretonin or symbiotes. Sam and Daniel and probably everyone else assumed that it was because, as more Jaffa began to use Tretonin, there might be times when the drug could become scarce, particularly in times of disaster or war. There were concerns amongst some Jaffa that they had shifted their reliance on survival away from the Goa’uld and onto a chemical. It made some Jaffa uncomfortable, knowing that, as a race of proud warriors, a mere chemical could bring them to their knees, especially after the Tok’ra toxin, used to kill millions of Goa’uld (and their Jaffa hosts).
Although both fears were legitimate reasons for the Jaffa people, they were not the cause of Teal’c’s deep dives into infectious diseases and vaccines over the years. Jack understood, although neither of them spoke of it but the reason for his obsession was simple. After defecting, Teal’c had been desperate to prevent his beloved son from living under Goa’uld enslavement. Any loving father would want a better future for his son, and that desire was pivotal in his defection as the First Prime of Apophis to join the SCG. His most fervent wish had always been for his son to forgo taking on a larval Goa’uld, and then he’d fought to return home at great personal risk to stop the implantation.
Unfortunately, Teal’c arrived too late, since the kid was sick with an illness that looked suspiciously like Scarlet Fever to Jack. If they had a hope of saving him, it would have been necessary to bring Rya’c back through the Stargate to Earth. Unfortunately, the gate was too heavily guarded due to the shenanigans of Daniel and Carter, forcing Teal’c to make the agonising decision to implant him with a larval Goa’uld or watch him die. He chose to save Rya’c from death but had sentenced him to a lifelong dependence on the Goa’uld for his survival. To save his only child, he had no other option but to tether him to a race of narcissistic false gods he despised.
Jack had been there when Teal’c was forced to make an impossible choice between his morals and pragmatism, so he understood how much it broke the big Warrior’s heart. He knew his most cherished hope since that day was that Rya’c’s children could live truly free. Free of Goa’uld larvae or Tretonin. So, it always made perfect sense to Jack that Teal’c became obsessed with infectious diseases, particularly those to which young children were vulnerable. If they could protect Jaffa children by using vaccinations and antibiotics to develop herd immunity, then all their children’s children would finally be able to cast off the yoke of oppression that still tied them to the Goa’uld long after they had defeated these narcissistic snakes.
To Teal’c, until that happened, their defeat of their Goa’uld masters and emancipation would always be somewhat of a pyrrhic victory. With Rya’c now a young man, married to Kar’yn, who was a former member of the Hak’tyl resistance (a tribe of female Jaffa warriors) and pupil of Ishta, that time was surely imminent. He’d become well-versed in the illnesses that beset Earth’s population; yet it was on vaccinations that his brother in spirit struggled to understand why people would choose to risk their children’s lives even if they were willing to risk their own.
Teal’c was not alone. The head of Homeworld was having a hard time himself, trying to understand what the hell these people were thinking, or rather what they weren’t thinking with their cavalier attitudes to real diseases that had the potential to kill and cause serious side effects not just to their health or their children’s, but for everyone else on the planet, too. Herd immunity was a thing, and not caring about the rest of the population, including those who were the most vulnerable: babies, the infirm, those living in abject poverty, and the immunocompromised, was, in Jack’s opinion, the height of selfish narcissism.
Having spent the majority of his adult life in the service of his country and in the last decade or two, protecting everyone on Earth, not to mention defending people on many other worlds, it had come at a tremendous personal cost. He’d lost his son, a happy marriage, and denied himself a normal relationship with someone he loved. He’d been tortured, killed (and he couldn’t give you an exact number of times, thanks to the time he spent at Baal’s tender mercies), and endured life-threatening injuries too many times to count. As Spec Ops, Jack had also been ordered to do a lot of damn distasteful things by his superiors, and watched too many friends and foes die on the battlefield. He’d been falsely accused of heinous crimes, making personal sacrifices to save the planet, including failing to abide by his son’s last request (from an alternate reality), to rear his granddaughter because of his oath to protect. He knew what was at stake if he didn’t do his utmost to save everyone on the planet.
So no, Jack categorically did not understand how people could reject their obligations to their fellow humans. He couldn’t understand how people wilfully chose to reject hundreds of rigorously tested scientific studies that debunked any causal link between autism and the MMR vaccine.
He did understand that not everyone was suited to military service, or even working in so-called service sectors like healthcare, teaching, and some decidedly unglamorous, thankless jobs, for instance: garbage collectors, street cleaners and janitorial staff that so many of their fellow citizens sneered at for their lowly positions and poorly paid jobs. Still, surely the very least people could do for the world is not to deliberately sabotage the community’s health by casually destroying herd immunity, hard-earned by prior generations. Jack honestly didn’t think it was expecting too much for individuals to do one simple thing to prevent health scourges of decades past, like measles, smallpox and polio, which had been eradicated, to rise again and ruin lives and kill countless victims. Diseases that still decimate planets in the Milky Way even now.
But as he waited for the rest of the committee to arrive, he thought about the cursed study that appeared in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, in late February 1998. It was only four months after Teal’c’s unsuccessful bid to stop his son from taking on a prim’tah. That study, later debunked worldwide as bad science, seemed to have permanently lodged in many people’s minds as proof that the MMR vaccine caused Autism. Despite all of the obvious flaws in the study’s methodology, two decades on, people refused to have their children vaccinated.
Of course, after it was published, receiving much fanfare in the media, Teal’c had been on it like fleas on a dog. He’d immediately wanted to discuss the research and its implications. They had so many conversations about research ethics and scientific veracity when they were together as SG-1. Sometimes it was when they were eating their meals in the commissary; frequently, it was off-world, sitting around the campfire at night as they ate their MREs on whichever distant planet they happened to be visiting in the vast Milky Way. Inevitably, they’d always end up discussing at some point that damned paper in the British Medical Journal that had proved pivotal despite all of its flaws (or more likely, because of them), turning millions of people into science-denying and, tragically for victims and anti-vaxxers. One unethical study spawned a generation of insular, paranoid dupes with a sense of self-entitlement that felt that herd immunity was not their responsibility, exploding across some sectors of the community.
When Rya’c nearly died, SG-1 learned that, as evil as they believed the Goa’uld were, their depravity ran even deeper than they could have ever imagined. The Jaffa race had been created from some of the many human civilisations the Goa’ulds had abducted from their time on Earth, seeding the humans on other planets throughout the galaxy. Selected humans then became either lo’taurs (human slaves of the Goa’uld) or Jaffa (their warrior race). When they created the Jaffa race to act as living, breathing incubators for their larval young, they manipulated their genetic code, making them stronger and longer-lived. But unlike the Unas which were far more genetically compatible, they had to genetically engineer Jaffa so their bodies wouldn’t reject the infant Goa’uld they carried.
The point was that the Goa’uld hadn’t just waved a Faustian-like offer in front of the Jaffa – super strength, super long-life expectancy and ability to heal from illness or life-threatening injuries that would kill their lo’taurs. No, those scum-sucking parasitical slimy-assed snakes, masquerading as gods, upped the ante. They genetically modified Jaffa so that when Jaffa children typically reach physical maturity, at approximately ten years of age, their immune systems cease to function. The bottom line was that they would die within hours unless they received an infant Goa’uld (a prim’tah) or faced taking Tretonin in the absence of a larva after most Goa’uld had been wiped out.
And that, folks, Jack thought cynically as he watched the last few people rush in to find a seat, is what you call a Hobson’s choice for a Jaffa parent.
Anyway, after the team understood the choice that faced Jaffa parents- for their child to become an incubator to a Goa’uld or die of disease when they reached physical maturity- it was easy to see how the parasitic race gained such absolute control over so many mighty warriors. Daniel had argued it was probably why it was more comfortable for Jaffa to believe that their enslavers were Gods, because you couldn’t question or oppose gods. Acceptance was easier and definitely safer to live with.
It was also why Teal’c had always been so damned focused on learning how humans protected their children from infectious diseases and life-threatening viruses via the role of vaccines. For Jaffa to overcome the generations of genetic manipulations and truly save future generations of children, vaccines would play a pivotal role in preventing untold suffering and death as they build immunity the old-fashioned way.
This was why their team spent so much time debating the debacle over what should have been a nothing-burger study that appeared in 1998. He recalled how scathing Carter was during one memorable demolition of the highly flawed study, right off the bat when she first read it.
“What you must understand, Teal’c, is that there are some major weaknesses in the study. The sample size was only 12 children, and there were no control subjects.”
“I do not know what this means, Captain Carter,” their Jaffa teammate stated honestly. After all, while he was a warrior well versed in history and military doctrine, he was not a scientist.
After explaining what this meant, Carter continued to expand on the most serious flaws of the research. “The researchers took three variables: the MMR vaccine, autism and a novel gut entity that they named autistic enterocolitis, postulating based on their research that the measles vaccine caused enteric inflammation. They claimed it resulted in toxic proteins leaking from the intestines and travelling to the brain, which caused autism. Unfortunately, the data was manipulated to fit a preconceived hypothesis, and they committed errors in reaching their findings.”
Jack was hoeing into a piece of apple pie and had teased her, gently as he pushed her ignored blue jello over towards her. Daniel grinned and put a spoon in her hand.
“So, c’mon, Carter, don’t keep us in suspenders. What else?”
Shaking her head at the antics of her two male colleagues, she slipped the spoon into her favourite jello, making a squelching sound they knew well.
“Well, an investigation uncovered deliberate manipulation of patient data. They changed the medical histories and timelines of the children in the study to support the preconceived hypothesis, not the facts.”
Teal’c did that thing with ONE of his eyebrows and asked, “How so, Captain Carter?”
“The timeline of symptoms did not match up with the claims the researchers made in the paper; in some cases, investigations proved that intestinal issues appeared AFTER the onset of autistic symptoms, not BEFORE them, which shoots a hole in their hypothesis”, Sam told him as she took a mouthful of the blue confection and momentarily swooned as her taste buds approved.
“Plus, the whole scientific basis of the study was suspect as it relied on a small, uncontrolled sample of just 12 children, which is insufficient to establish a causal relationship,” she sniped as Daniel nodded, emphatically agreeing with her observation.
Jack also recalled another occasion when Carter was furious about that damned study, angry that it had taken 14 years for the highly esteemed Lancet to fully repudiate the research claims back in 1998 after dancing around the topic for almost a decade. Sam felt strongly that they were also complicit in the spread of anti-science sentiment and the hysteria over the safety and effectiveness of vaccines by not acting much more quickly.
Unsurprisingly, when the Lancet’s long-overdue repudiation of the Wakefield study finally arrived some seven years ago, Sam had been absolutely furious when it had taken so long, understanding just how much damage had been caused. That conversation took place in a restaurant in Washington, DC, when Teal’c had returned to Earth to sign a trade agreement between the Jaffa and an independent vaccine manufacturer to supply the Jaffa with the MMR vaccine for their children.
“Yes, it’s a good thing they finally admitted they stuffed up, but even if you ignore all of the data manipulation and all of the research that has failed to replicate, there were huge ethical issues with the study that should have been a red flag from the very beginning,” she said through gritted teeth. “Some of those children in the study were developmentally delayed and were exposed to invasive medical procedures, including colonoscopies and spinal taps.”
As was the case whenever Jack heard about helpless kids being exploited, he wanted to do some serious damage to the people responsible. In this case, he was pretty sure he’d be asking Teal’c to spar with him in the gym so the former Prime of Apophis could beat his ass as a substitute method of coping with his anger.
“Because of the so-called doctor’s financial malfeasance,” Daniel growled. Okay, obviously, Jack hadn’t been the only one feeling pissed off. Perhaps all of them needed to spar in the gym. Carter looked ready to combust, too.
“Not only were the tests not clinically necessary, but they’d been done without proper ethical approval from the hospital’s review board,” Carter explained, scornfully. “Later, when stripped of his medical license to practice as a doctor, the General Medical Council ruled that Wakefield displayed a “callous disregard” for the well-being of the children involved in his research.”
They were all silent for a long time after that, because what was there to say?
Finally, it was their old teammate who spoke with even more gravitas than normal.
“It is just then that this man cannot practise as a healer. It sounds like he is not an honourable individual,” Teal’c declared as the rest of the team solemnly agreed with their Jaffa brother.
– – – –
Notes:
- February 2010
British Medical Journal Lancet Retracts A. Wakefield’s MMR Paper - Jan 06 2011
Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent | The BMJ - November 27, 2025
The Andrew Wakefield Study: From Publication to Retraction – ScienceInsights
Chapter 10
Daniel arrived accompanied by Dr Aoife O’Shea, who was zealously guarding her cup of Irish Breakfast tea, even though it was not breakfast, but it didn’t matter to O’Shea; she drank it morning, noon and night. Danny, unsurprisingly, was clutching several cups of his good coffee jealously and handed a second oversized mug to Jack, who nodded appreciatively. He’d intended to grab some, but he had headed to the infirmary to plead with one of the nurses who used to be under his command to let him use her computer to copy Davinia’s two photos of her parents and send them both to Master Sergeant Harriman with a request to Penelope to do her magic when she got some free time.
Realising he was cutting it fine and feeling that turning up late (in the absence of a catastrophe) wasn’t a good example to the rest of the participants, it completely slipped O’Neill’s mind to grab the good stuff Daniel had hoarded on base like a leprechaun hoarding gold. He knew that someone from NORAD would have set out an urn and a coffee maker along with supplies for participants, although the coffee was shite, as Dr O’Shea would say in her melodic Gaelic accent, which he reckoned had soothed many a fraught client over the years. So, he was grateful to Daniel for sharing his hoard of the best Ethiopian or Brazilian blends, whichever he was in the mood for and stashed in a super-secret place that only a select few were privy to and permitted to use if he wasn’t around.
There’d been a long-running betting pool at the SCG, interrupted and shut down, back when Daniel had been ‘off being Ancient’ regarding who would finally discover its location. The SGC betting pool resumed again when he was found, naked as a jaybird, on a distant planet after the Ancients turfed him out of the higher plain of existence. So far …nada, much to Walter’s disgust, Daniels stash was never found, and the mystery remained unsolved when Jack stole Hariman away from the SGC to work for Homeworld Command. Being one of the few in on the secret of where Danny hid his coffee, Jack was certain it was one secret that would remain unsolved since the hidey-hole was Machiavellian.
Sipping on the good stuff appreciatively, he watched as Aoife approached respectfully. The psychologist might not be military, but she certainly understood protocol well enough. On Atlantis, their relationship was much more relaxed and friendly, but she was aware that back here on Earth, he was Lieutenant General O’Neill, head of Homeworld Command.
“General, O’Neill,” I’m not sure what you said to Vinia earlier tonight, but thank you. She seems a lot happier,” she said, smiling.
He shrugged nonchalantly as he sipped his coffee. “Just chatted…ya know, about hair and braids and stuff, ” he said vaguely.
Daniel choked on his coffee, and Aoife eyed him shrewdly, but she didn’t call him out on his evasive answer. After all, she understood discretion and confidentiality better than most.
“Ah, well, that makes sense,” she said with a nod of her still mostly brunette head, although the odd strand of grey was creeping in. If they were in the family quarters back on Atlantis, Jack fancied she might have given him a cheeky wink, but here at Cheyenne Mountain, she was the model of decorum.
Daniel, however, was not. “Hair and braids? What do you know about that stuff?” he whined theatrically as the last few participants stumbled through the door, with barely a minute to spare, Carolyn Lam amongst them, scrambling to take her seat.
Jack might disdain protocol for protocol’s sake, attending endless time-wasting committee meetings and mindless bureaucracy, but when in charge, he ran a tight ship and didn’t tolerate tardiness. Not unless you had a damned good reason. There was a lot of brainpower in the conference room, and he felt that it shouldn’t be disrespected by waiting for people who couldn’t be bothered to get themselves there on time. As Carter had said more than once, following her stint working at Area 51, where a good portion of her day was taken up in meetings, being late to a meeting didn’t just waste time incrementally, but exponentially.
Wincing slightly as he thought about Sam yet again and remembered why she wasn’t here, too, he covered his misstep by chiding Daniel, albeit gently.
“You’re right, I don’t know about hair and braids, Danny, but my friend knows heaps. Did you know that people in the past have used braids to send secret codes?” he asked, knowing that others were now listening in to their conversation and opting for the generic friend moniker. “But enough about hairstyles, let’s get to work,” he suggested, looking across at Carolyn to see if she or Dr Lee wanted to get the ball rolling.
Jack was not surprised that Bill Lee preferred Caro to chair the meeting; he was an odd duck, was Bill. Sometimes he seemed like he was barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Still, then he’d do something beyond brilliant, like the virtual reality world he created for Ava Dixon, Earth’s very own human-created replicator using alien nanite tech acquired by SGC. Ava had been part of Henry Wallace’s research project, which was researching nanotechnology for medical purposes. After Wallace’s death, her boss, Dr Richard Poole, went way off the reservation into crazy town, illegally creating Ava and another male replicator, but hey, what could go wrong? Except for the replicator going rogue, killing his creator…such a damn cliché, Jack thought with a mental eye roll. This left them with the very awkward ethical and NatSec dilemma of what to do with Ava Dixon, who had been extremely helpful.
Dr Lee created a terrifyingly realistic ‘Matrix-meets—The-Trueman-Show’ virtual-reality world that was uber realistic. Bill’s attention to detail was superb! They just hoped it was escape-proof as they believed it to be, although the subterfuge that Ava was in the real world was the first and best layer of security. No doubt, thanks to the amount of time Bill spent playing Dungeons and Dragons and cosplaying video games or whatever the hell they were, Jack thought. O’Neill would be the first to admit he was not exactly an aficionado on all that kind of stuff, but still, he was grateful that Bill was and could put it to such a key use in helping to save the planet.
Different strokes and all that stuff, but like many brilliant scientists, he often seemed like he shouldn’t be allowed to wander outside without the close supervision of a responsible adult. He knew that Sam was often exasperated with her colleague, but despite his faults, their collaborations were frequently fruitful. And yet again today, he felt a pang of deep loss and pain at the thought of perhaps never seeing her again. He reminded himself that if Sam really was gone (and he wasn’t ready to accept it), she had been so happy finally doing what she had trained for her entire career. He couldn’t begrudge her the chance to command her own spaceship.
Deliberately pushing his personal thoughts aside, he looked at the slightly comical figure of Bill, with his perennially wrinkled lab coat. He had a bunch of pens poking out of his pockets, his hair thin and wispy, a mite too long in the back and receding at the front. Jack admitted that his absentmindedness could be highly irritating at times, though unlike many of his colleagues, he was not arrogant and possessed a strong sense of whimsy that also endeared him to people. Still, Dr Lee would be the first one to admit that chairing meetings was not his forte. Luckily, Carolyn, having spent a significant period of her career at the CDC, where committee meetings were de rigueur, was happy to chair meetings. Of course, her social skills were much more developed than those of the overall project head of the War on Happy Zombies, too.
Caro called the meeting to order, welcoming the newcomer, Dr Aoife O’Shea, to their late-night session. She introduced the Head of Atlantis’ Psychological Services to the rest of the group. Some individuals she already knew because of their presence on Atlantis, and others from the logistical side of dispensing the vaccine, which mainly took place on Earth, that she didn’t. Carolyn launched into a brief precis of the issue of vaccine hesitance as given by the epidemiologists that morning, then moved on to an even briefer summary of the conundrum they faced over the Congress’s Gang of Eight and their edict that they could not force the anti-vaxxers to be vaccinated was done by Colonel Paul Davis, and at the end, Aoife looked puzzled.
“I’ve read the mission reports on the Ori Plague that infected Earth some time ago. Obviously, you didn’t get informed consent to administer the vaccine that Colonel Carter and the Ancient called Orin developed. So why are they demanding it now?”
Inge Rasmussen and Eddie Yap, the epidemiologists, nodded intently, as did Daniel Jackson.
“Good point, Dr O’Shea,” Daniel said. “Why the double standard, Jack? Why doesn’t the president overrule them since it IS a legitimate question of international security, surely?” he asked, het up enough that he neglected to use O’Neill’s rank or realise the position he was putting his friend in.
Plus, Jack was trying not to let this devolve into one of what SG-1 used to call their old married-couple arguments. Although personally, he preferred to think of them as spirited debates, he settled instead for a mental eye roll of epic proportion at Dr Jackson.
Danny could be so naïve at times. Despite writing scores of treaties and trade agreements with their allies on other worlds filled with the language of diplomacy, he often seemed astonishingly ignorant of politics on their own planet, particularly US politics. Although obviously, he was pissed off about the Gang of Eight dictating matters of critical operational security, which affected not just the security of the US but tangentially the whole damned world, yet no matter how much he might privately want to give President Walsh a damn good kick up the butt and read him the riot act for playing politics in this dire situation, Jack couldn’t. Walsh was his commander in chief, and while Jack abhorred politics, he also understood how the game was played. Unfortunately, it was a necessary evil to carry out his job.
Jack couldn’t speak freely, couldn’t express his honest opinion that the reason Issiah Walsh was insisting that they accede to the Gang of Eight’s demand NOT to vaccinate known anti-vaxxer advocates without their express consent was mostly that Walsh was newly elected. This was his first term, and therefore conventional wisdom said he couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong; at least that’s what his aides probably told him. Had it been his second term, since he wasn’t able to be re-elected for a third term, he would likely be far less concerned about how he was perceived in the press and public. If the Stargate and the MCD–238β vaccine become declassified, which Jack conceded was always a possibility.
Was his theory about the Commander-in-Chief cynical? Probably… but in Jack’s defence, the previous US president, Henry Hayes, had been more cautious regarding issues concerning the SGC, bending over backwards to placate the former Senator Kinsey, now his Vice President, during his first term. After his re-election, he was much more gung-ho and prepared to take the hard decisions when the Earth was in danger. Not that he could share any of those thoughts with the people in this room.
So instead, he shrugged. “Well, for one, back during the Ori Plague, we didn’t ask! It was an existential crisis, and we had to act immediately.”
(Also, Henry Hayes wasn’t worried about the next election, but Jack refrained from speaking that out loud.)
“The Ori Plague was highly infectious; it spread across the globe like wildfire. People were dying in droves; three thousand people lost their lives out of the five thousand who’d been diagnosed. If we hadn’t administered the antidote/vaccine when we did, a lot more lives across the world would have been lost. We believe the death rate was probably one hundred percent of people who contracted it, would have been lost, because we knew that similar Ori Plagues on other planets that resisted the Ori, who then wiped out entire populations. There were no survivors,” he reminded those sitting around the conference table grimly.
“The MCD –238β vaccine is not infectious in the way that the Ori Plague spread, although we don’t know if it’s been manipulated by Shen Xiaoyi since then. She gained access to it years ago, so we don’t know what modifications she’s made, but we can make a best guess that it’s weaponised. Plus, even with our intel from an unimpeachable source, they felt that it was not an absolute certainty Shen Xiaoyi would follow through on the plan, though we do have it on good authority that the possibility is extremely high.”
The group of powerful, though not necessarily wise, politicians expressed scepticism regarding the credible threat Earth faced. This was despite a meticulously prepared and terrifying report prepared by Daniel and Paul Davis, including written and video transcripts of Special Agent Paula Muir’s debrief on how her home world fell to the mind control drug. Neither man pulled any punches, and Jack’s presentation also included the absolute latest intel from various independent sources, including within the Chinese government and, of course, the usual US national security agencies’ own assets (spies) in China. This had supported everything Paula laid out as occurring in the Area 52 Refugees reality, so their sceptical reaction frustrated O’Neill. He observed that others in the room shared his view, based on their body language, seeing the Gang of Eight’s Pollyanna-ish view of the threat that existed, Jack thought it was verging on criminally negligent.
Not that Jack O’Neill could say that openly. As a Lieutenant General and the head of Homeworld Command, just as he could not criticise the Commander in Chief, he could not openly slam duly elected members of Congress. He’d learnt that painful lesson the hard way with Kinsey, a rabidly Christian Nationalist Neocon, and avowed isolationist, which seemed to be a contradiction in terms, who, before the asshat got his hypocritical ass snaked, had been cooperating with the Trust. Jack detested him since Kinsey had always believed he could play both sides against each other to gain control over the Stargate. The fool had a permanent boner thinking of all the humans out there in the galaxy that he could potentially convert to his radical religious views that, in Jack’s opinion, shared more in common with ultra-radical Islamic mullahs who sought to impose Sharia Law worldwide than Kinsey’s religion did with caring for those less people who were less fortunate. In the end, karma caught up with their former Veep, but seriously, was it any wonder why Jack’s tolerance for politicians was lower than a snake’s belly?
Unfortunately, in his position as the head of Home World, he was forced to remain deferential in public, much as it galled him to do so. Like in this instance, when he longed to call out the Gang of Eight for the bunch of glory-hounds they were, lacking in integrity and courage as opposed to protecting themselves and their damned jobs.
Aoife broke into his thoughts. “It would be fair to say, if we want to analyse why we’re being directed not to vaccinate a statistically significant group of people – those who are vaccine-hesitant with getting informed consent, it seems like we (and the rest of Earth’s population) are being penalised for you all doing a bang-up job of planning to prevent a disaster. Last time we faced a disaster of such massive proportions, we weren’t anywhere near ready to repel the threat and were forced to react as best we could, but their thinking seems much akin to that of a child. Psychologists call it magical thinking.”
Lam snorted. “Yeah, but magical thinking normally resolves in children by about seven years of age.”
“True, in adults who aren’t the politico, individuals who continue to be controlled by magical thinking frequently get diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed on antipsychotics,” O’Shea observed with a wicked gleam in her brown eyes.
Daniel nodded. “Yeah, you’re right, Doctor, last time we got lucky. Lucky that Teal’c was able to appeal to Gerak, corrupted by the Priory, managed to convince him to atone, and in doing so, save the lives of the people in the SGC by Gerak sacrificing himself,” he said passionately.
“Lucky too that Orin defied his people and returned to human form to provide us with a partial cure, that combined with the plague victims’ immuno-antibodies, Sam and Dr Lee combined to produce a cure, Otherwise, every single person on Earth would have perished,” he continued angrily.
“But that was serendipity rather than good management. This time, we have the MCD –238β vaccine in sufficient quantities for everyone,” Bill Lee reminded his colleagues, reminding the VaDS committee of the significantly more positive position they were in.
“Dr Lee is right. Many people have contributed to the mission, which means if we’re lucky, we aren’t facing enslavement of the entire planet or galaxy,” Dr Lam noted grimly, having nursed patients with the plague and watched many die, like Heather Murphy.
“Plus, with the Ori Plague, your world leaders chose to seek forgiveness for vaccinating people who were dying without seeking informed consent rather than seek permission and have it knocked back,” Aoife summed up succinctly, with a wicked glint in her eye.
Pity the President didn’t subscribe to that philosophy, Jack thought morosely, exchanging a glance with his 2IC, knowing the reserved man well enough by this stage to know that the lieutenant colonel was thinking the same thing. Paul’s imperceptible smirk at Jack confirmed his suspicion.
Meanwhile, Carolyn wanted to keep the meeting ticking over. “So, Dr O’Shea, having outlined the issues we’re faced with, the question we are facing is: how do we navigate the substantive barriers in our way. What can you tell us about the psychological makeup of vaccine-hesitant individuals and, crucially, how do we go about changing their minds?”
“Both excellent questions,” Aoife responded quickly. “Let me start by saying that, having worked at the CDC, Dr Lam, you are no doubt already aware that there are specialist psychologists: behavioural and cognitive specialists, who are much more qualified than I am to speak on this matter. I’ve skimmed their work in the last few hours, but please keep in mind I’m just your garden-variety clinical psychologist. My recommendation is that with so much hanging in the balance on this issue, you need to seek out someone imminently better qualified than me.”
Jack interceded. “We appreciate that we’ve thrown you in the deep end, Doctor. But that said, you of all people know how long it takes to run a security clearance on a civilian.” She nodded wryly, acknowledging his point. “So, we will be seeking out said experts,” he said with a dash of contempt discernible to those present who knew him well. His dislike of many so-called experts was far from secret.
“In fact,” he continued, “knowing my deputy director, he’ll already be planning to get started on it when we are back in Washington tomorrow. Am I right, Colonel Davis?”
With a smirk, missed by all but Aoife, Carolyn and Jack, Paul shook his head. “No, General. I spoke to Captain Sparkes a couple of hours ago and requested that she get right onto it tonight.”
“Tonight? Doesn’t she have dinner with the in-laws tonight?” Jack inquired, amused. Rachel, his aide, did not get on with her Mother-in-law and was usually thrilled to have a legitimate excuse to cancel. He resolved to buy her theatre tickets to thank her for working late.
Paul smiled slyly, and Jack had to struggle not to laugh as he said. “So, we have it in hand, but for now, Dr O’Shea, perhaps you can give us a general overview of the psychological make-up of an anti-vaxxer and how the hell we convince them to get vaccinated.”
“Okay, General O’Neill, I’ll do my best,” she agreed, rising to her feet. “I’m assuming that to everyone in this room, the statement that correlation does not imply causation will be one that you’ve all encountered before,” she began, looking around and seeing most people nodding.
But she was far too experienced to know that just because they were familiar with the concept, it meant they understood the concept fully or even a bit. Perhaps sensing that more than a few people might be a bit hazy on statistical theory they may have studied years ago in college, the tiny psychologist nodded to herself before continuing to her captive audience.
“Hopefully, you’ll all recall from college statistics lectures that causation is one of the cornerstones that drives sound statistical analysis, no matter the topic or subject being analysed accurately. ‘Correlation does not imply causation’ is probably one of the most critical distinctions that college statistics courses aim to beat into their students’ thick heads,” she told them, pausing to take a sip of her tea and gather her thoughts as people sniggered.
“Why, I hear you ask,” she continued. “And if you didn’t ask yourself that question, then wake the shite up, and do so because you aren’t paying attention,” she joked.
Anticipating this would soften up her audience, who’d been meeting for many hours today already, she carried on, enticing them in with her Irish brogue that those individuals who already knew her well had noted was definitely more pronounced today.
Canny of her, Jack thought, tamping down a grin.
“Now, if I were an academic like Dr Jackson here with at least three PhDs to his credit or a professor of statistics, I would probably explain why researchers and analysts bang on about causation and correlation so fricking much. It’s because just two different variables may exhibit synchronised movements or they appear to be linked in a highly predictable mathematical pattern, this statistical association alone is not evidence on its own to prove that one variable directly influences or causes changes in the other.”
“Alright, I can see your eyes are glazing over, in spite of trying to follow what I just said. So why don’t we let’s make it more relevant and borrow an example I use sometimes to demonstrate to people that correlation doesn’t equal causation.”
Jack grinned as he felt the room let out a collective sigh. Having heard this information on correlation versus causation many times over the years when they discussed vaccine hysteria with Teal’c, O’Neill had a damn good idea where Aoife was headed. Hell, he could probably give this TED Talk himself, based on the times Sam had lectured them sharply when she thought they were breaking the golden rule in the field. Not that he wanted to stand up and explain this stuff… O’Shea was a much better speaker than he’d ever be; despite her protestations, she was merely a humble clinical psychologist and not an academic.
On the white projection screen that someone had organised (undoubtedly Daniel, since he and Aoife were as thick as thieves ever since he’d become Clare and Nicholas’ foster father), a stark graphic popped up. It showed a line graph tracking two variables: one red and the other blue, and a Y axis plotting 12 months of the year. The two variables showed an almost identical rise for each variable, and, equally, an almost identical dip.
Aoife grin. “Okay, so we have two variables that seem to be connected; they both go up and come down at almost identical rates. One variable, the red line, shows ice cream consumption; the blue line represents shark attacks on humans. At first glance, people may conclude from comparing the two data sets that one variable influences the other. Some people might conclude that eating ice cream increases the risk of being attacked by sharks. Conversely, others might think getting attacked by sharks makes victims eat more ice cream, and both conclusions would be wrong, because while there is a correlation, neither causes the other variable to go up or down. It’s a third variable that impacts ice cream consumption and shark attacks.”
One of the logistics people suggested, “Sunscreen perhaps?”
“Well, that is a credible theory… that it might attract sharks, so the researchers would need to study that variable too, but out of curiosity, why would sunscreen cause shark attacks to go up and down like that?” Aoife asked curiously.
“Um…I don’t know,” the Army major admitted, looking at the ceiling for inspiration. “Maybe at different times of the year people use more or less sunscreen,” Karlson suggested, tentatively.
That’s an insightful and logical theory. One that researchers might decide to test, but how do you explain how sunscreen would affect ice cream consumption and cause it to go up and down?”
Looking deflated, the major admitted, “I don’t know.”
Aoife smiled encouragingly, “You’re getting warmer, Major Karlson. “All the information is in the graphic. Think about it, why would you wear more sunscreen?”
“Umm.., maybe different times of the day or…” Karlson paused, thinking about what O’Shea said. “Or different times of the year,” he said, suddenly seeing the Y axis and making the connection.
“Yes, exactly. When the temperature rises as the seasons change and summer approaches, people eat more ice cream to cool down as it’s hot; they ALSO go swimming in the sea, oceans, rivers and tributaries where sharks live when it’s hot,” Aoife explained, “and that, my friends, is what is called in research and data analysis a spurious variable.”
She clicked on another simple graphic displaying two variables, again a blue line and a red one. “In this example, we are comparing total accidental pool drownings expressed by the blue line and the red line tracks nuclear energy production of reactors over a period of one hundred years. This comparison indicates that two highly disparate variables track each other with surprising closeness over many years, exhibiting what a statistician might note is a high degree of positive statistical association.
“But even though there is a strong correlation, no sane person would argue that nuclear power is causing an increase in residential and public swimming pool drownings,” Aoife stated.
“Nor that increased people drowning leads to an increase in nuclear power production and reactors,” Dr Lee observed.
“Any possibility of a direct link, i.e. causation, is essentially nil; enacting safety protocols at a community pool does not affect reactor output, and equally, shutting down a power plant would not stop pool drownings in a statistically meaningful sense.”
Paul Davis decided to help Aoife out by playing her stooge, “So what is the real cause of this strong statistical association, Dr O’Shea?”
“I’m so glad you asked me that, Colonel Davis,” she joked, her brown eyes twinkling with good humour, as everyone joined in laughing.
“It can be credited to several systemic factors that include global population growth along with an increased standard of living for many people, with the total number of people owning or having access to swimming pools increasing dramatically over the last century, also leading to a proportional increase in total drownings,” Bill Lee, the Head of the MCD –238β vaccine program, offered up an opinion….a well-educated one.
Aoife smiled at him, understanding this was all like child’s play to the physicist – a gifted child sitting through a class on the alphabet but willing to join in, nonetheless.
“Very well stated, Dr Lee. Anyone else want to jump in?” she asked the group coaxingly.
Dr Inge Rasmussen, the Norwegian epidemiologist, answered. “Worldwide energy demands are increasing, driven by the same population growth and accelerating industrialisation, including automation. It means we have a much greater reliance on energy sources like nuclear power, which in turn results in consistent rises in production output.”
Aoife nodded, “Correct, Doctor Rasmussen,” she grinned. “So, these two variables reflect disparate but parallel consequences. Exponential expansion of human civilisation and infrastructure over time.”
Clicking on her computer, the head of psychology in Atlantis, remarked, “Okay, one last example.”
As the graphic changed, showing another blue and red line that mimicked the former ones, with a Y-axis showing years from 1965 to 2015, she chirped with an infectious grin. “So, here is a fun one, folks. This compares the annual total number of high school graduates in the U.S. with the total annual consumption of pizza nationwide (calculated as the total number of pies consumed per year). And surprise, surprise, when you analyse the two sets of data, it consistently exhibits a strong positive correlation. As the number of students who graduate rises, so does the national consumption of pizza.”
Everyone laughed at Aoife’s example, joking that it would have been great if they could do this with some pizza and beer because, clearly, eating pizza made you smarter, based on the graph she’d put up on the screen.
Carolyn Lam, CMO for the MCD –238β operation, was extremely well-versed in correlation versus causality, too. It would be odd if she weren’t after having previously worked for the CDC, and being a good sport, she played along with the humorous example.
“So, does this mean that gaining a high school diploma, psychologically or economically, inclines the graduate to eat more pizza?”
One of their other logistic specialists on the committee, an Army Major Karen Saunders, joined the conversation. “I’d hazard a guess that the strong statistical relationship is more likely explained by the key, continuous growth of the U.S. population over the years from 1965 to 2015.”
Saunders paused, and Aoife nodded, then indicated she should continue.
“An expanding population means a growing number of students are completing high school diplomas each year. At the same time, an expanding population also explains the larger number of consumers buying pizza, and it has nada, zilch, zero to do with educational status.”
“Well said, Major,” Aoife nodded. “In the second example and this one I’ve presented, attributing causation to the relationship between these two variables ignores the real cause; that U.S. population growth acts as the universal hidden driving force in both examples.
“Well, this completes my TED talk on correlation versus causality…at least for now, although we will return to it later. Unless anyone has anything further to add?”
When no one did, Aoife launched into an explanation, showing how, in the absence of understanding that two variables might be strongly correlated but not causative but, individuals may often interpret data quite differently than trained analysts and researchers. And that’s why we often end up with flawed conclusions.
“Which leads people to apply faulty logic, unconscious biases, and use heuristic processing to make sense of research or even stuff that is going on in their everyday lives. Heuristic processing allows people to use mental shortcuts to make quick decisions and use problem-solving, which often result in less-than-optimal outcomes,” she observed wryly.
Chapter 11
Dr O’Shea went on to briefly discuss heuristic processing, including the Dunning-Kruger Effect and cognitive dissonance, which most people had already heard of and thus had a vague idea about, and belief perseverance, also known as conceptual conservatism, which was a lot less well known. Belief perseverance (sometimes referred to as conceptual conservatism), Aoife explained, was the tendency in individuals to maintain their beliefs even when presented with clear, reputable, contradictory evidence. The psychologist explained that it was often a part of an individual’s attempts to resolve cognitive dissonance, that very uncomfortable feeling people get when they hold two mutually compatible thoughts, beliefs or emotions.
“So, it’s the same as confirmation bias?” someone asked.
“Kinda akin to kissing cousins,” Aoife smirked “Confirmation bias often arises out of feeling uncomfortable in holding two diametric opinions. That’s uncomfortable for us, so confirmation bias or heuristic tries to protect us (and save us time) as it seeks out or gives much greater weight to evidence or data that confirms existing beliefs or theories, and our brains will try to actively avoid reading or processing data that challenges or disproves their conclusions, i.e., opinions.
“How does it differ from belief perseverance?” Carolyn asked. “Or is it the same thing?
“When cognitive scientists talk about belief perseverance, they are referring to a common tendency we all possess to maintain or even strengthen our beliefs even when presented with irrefutable evidence that we are wrong. Bear in mind that (although some people possess the tendency to a greater degree than others,” Aoife cautioned them, before sharing a quote with them by a poet and writer, Dark Jar Tin Zoo, that she had used sometimes to illustrate how belief perseverance worked to her clients.
“To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken,” she recited in her Irish lilt, eliciting appreciative chuckles from her audience.
Bill Lee commented, “So, belief perseverance is like the brain hears data that potentially threatens its order by having to reprocess information because we got things wrong, and it slaps its hands over its ears and sings the La La La La Song so loudly it can’t hear what anyone else is saying or doing?”
People chuckled at his image, but she nodded, “Not a bad example of what our lazy-arse brains will do if they can get away with it.”
“If we let them get away with it,” Paul Davis observed wryly.
Aoife then demonstrated how belief perseverance played a huge role in perpetuating vaccine hesitance. When the tin-foil hat-wearing brigade was presented with credible scientific evidence debunking their faulty correlation-based associations and pointed out the existence of spurious variables, case-based qualitative studies, and the personal experience of an anti-vaxxer acquaintance or their mate’s great-aunt Mary, anti-vaxxers stubbornly clung to badly collected ‘data’ that couldn’t be replicated by other researchers or methods. At this point, if forced into defending untenable conclusions, they would insist forcefully that scientists were corrupt shills for Big Pharma and their data was false or fake, or they wanted the human race to die or turn into lizard people or scores of far-fetched alternatives. Anything but to entertain the slightest possibility they were wrong, all taking place without them being consciously aware that’s what was going on.
Inevitably, people asked why our brains do that, so Dr O’Shea discussed the sunk cost fallacy, which she explained as a heuristic tendency to continue an enterprise because of past investments in resources, time or mental energy that weren’t productive, when it would make more sense to abandon them and start over. She also mentioned other common heuristics (mental processing shortcuts), like confirmation bias, and focusing only on data that supports your biases while ignoring any data that doesn’t.
Next, she briefly explained what cognitive psychology identified as survivorship bias, considering successful examples and ignoring examples that failed to fit the narrative. At that point, Dr Lam cited the example of sugar and hyperactivity, where parents vividly remembered examples where their kids ate a lot of sugar and turned feral, but they instantly forgot about all the times when they didn’t. They briefly covered the Barnum Effect (a heuristic tendency to believe that vague generic descriptions apply to you, such as horoscopes in the paper). Aoife concluded her brief overview of heuristic shortcuts by explaining that the illusory truth effect was massively important to understanding how vaccine hesitancy exploded so quickly.
“The illusory truth effect is the tendency for people to believe false information after repeated exposure. Essentially, when determining if something is true, our brains rely on the information’s familiarity, which increases with repetition, she explained.
“Tell people a lie often enough, and they eventually begin to believe it, Daniel commented succinctly.
“Joseph Goebbels,” Dr Lee snarled. “And because of the previously discussed heuristics, people congregate with other people who share their views, and they’ll repeat false information or outright lies and keep reinforcing themselves and others in a never-ending wheel,” he said in disgust.
“Exactly,” Aoife agreed, “It creates an echo chamber that makes it extremely difficult to appeal to the logical part of their brain.”
“It’s like they are in a cult and need deprogramming,” Karen Saunders observed.
“Good analogy, Major,” Aoife told her. “Alright, why don’t we take a couple of minutes and all grab a cuppa and wet out whistles. Talking is thirsty work,” she joked as everyone chuckled and went to grab a hot beverage and settle back down again. They were keen to get back into it.
“So, let’s look at what’s known by many people as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, first defined by two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, in 1999, and talk about how it plays a significant role in advancing vaccine hesitancy. If anyone hasn’t heard of it, the Dunning-Kruger Effect describes a systematic tendency for people with limited knowledge or skills in a specific area, say infectious disease control, to overestimate their ability or knowledge about how to control disease. But I could have chosen many other examples, like building a high-rise building, or extinguishing wildfires in highly remote mountainous regions.
“Basically, anything at all that requires specific and specialised skills/ knowledge bases, but let me tell you about a friend. Let’s call him ‘Wayne’. He vastly overestimates his abilities and knowledge in infectious disease control. This is believed to be due to a mechanism we psychologists call metacognition, the ability to evaluate your own performance. Now, researchers have found that people with little subject-specific knowledge or skills tend to overestimate their skills/knowledge because they lack the meta-cognitive skills to recognise their own incompetence.”
“By the way, if anyone is curious, the opposite cognitive bias to the Dunning-Kruger Effect is sometimes referred to as Imposter Syndrome,” Aoife said as an aside as people nodded, instantly recognising the phenomenon.
“It’s when people with extremely impressive qualifications in their field underestimate their level of skill or knowledge, or when they have the metacognitive ability to recognise how much knowledge is yet to be learned about a knowledge domain.”
“An example of that would be cancer research. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go in understanding the intricacies of the different cancer types and why individuals’ responses often aren’t uniform or predictable,” Carolyn said.
Aoife nodded, “Great example, Dr Lam. So, sometimes, overconfidence can be an asset. It can drive progress, since experts, cognizant of the potential risks of pushing forward or taking chances, may hesitate, and it can end up impeding progress. But overconfidence becomes dangerous when it exceeds competency, which I’m sure you’d all agree on,” she smiled, seeing lots of nodding.
“However, we can overcome it by being aware of the tendency to overestimate our skills and knowledge that is lacking, seeking objective feedback from others who are experts in the domain and developing metacognitive abilities. They can all help mitigate the effects of overconfidence and overestimating novice-level ability and skills.”
Looking around the room, Jack could see that most people seemed engaged, and he thought this was a good example of why experts weren’t necessarily the best people to explain complex concepts. Unless they were trained educators, they often assumed the audience had basic subject knowledge like they did and didn’t bother to simplify the topic. For having literally only hours to prepare, Dr O’Shea was doing a fine job.
“Anyway, let’s go back to our friend Wayne, who lives on the coast and thinks he’s got the whole immunisation versus natural immunity and epidemiological public health stuff down pat because he’d done his ‘research’ checking out sites on the internet and follows a bunch of experts in their field, otherwise known as social influencers whom he trusts absolutely. Anyway, our friend loves to surf, but he’s terrified of sharks, so when he finds someone online who is claiming that eating ice cream increases the risk of shark attacks, he flips out. Wayne decides that to make sure that sharks don’t attack him, he’ll start a publicity campaign to ensure the local ice cream parlour at the beach where he surfs every day (even in winter) is forced to close down, so he’ll be protected from shark attacks.”
“Why doesn’t he just refrain from eating ice cream?” Jack asked with a smirk.
“Yeah, that might seem like the obvious answer, but you see, Wayne is an ice cream addict. If it’s in his freezer, he’ll eat it – all of it until it’s gone. He can’t help himself,” she explained, deadly serious.
“Okay, hypothetically, Wayne is your cousin. Admittedly, he’s not real bright, but he is family. How would you explain to him that the ice cream parlour at the beach is not attracting sharks?” Aoife asked the committee.
Bill Lee said, “I’d definitely make sure to tell my dumbass cousin Wayne-the-pain that there’s a shit ton of research demonstrating that in winter and the cooler months, the consumption of ice cream goes down and so does the number of surfers. I’d also tell him that as the weather heats up again, people eat ice cream because it’s hot and go surfing and swimming in the ocean to cool down. I’d tell him that eating ice cream doesn’t cause shark attacks.”
Everyone laughed at his answer. “Good answer, Dr Lee,” she praised him. “But what if Wayne told you that there is a scientist in South Dakota who had studied 15 shark attacks extensively, and he proved that they only attack people who have consumed ice cream before they go into the water?”
“I’d tell him to stop smoking the whacky weed because that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Bill said, rolling his eyes.
“Okay, but what if he was right, and Wayne showed you the study which had been published in Nature, a highly regarded scientific journal?”
“I’d call it bullshit and try to debunk the study, and I reckon I wouldn’t be the only one, either.”
“Yes, but what if mothers of children attacked by sharks, including adult children who surfed in known shark habitats and were killed, had been part of the study by the researcher, let’s call him Dr Norm. He claims that every single one of the victims of shark attacks (adults) or their mothers (child surfers) recall that they ate ice cream before their attacks, proving that ice cream is very dangerous and should be banned from sale at the beach.”
As Bill went to respond, Aoife interrupted. “Oh, shite, I forgot to mention that Cousin Wayne tells you he’s been doing extensive research on ice cream causing shark attacks via the internet, didn’t I. My bad!”
The head of the MCD –238β vaccine program glared at Aoife. “It makes no difference, the conclusion is flawed or worse, it’s false.”
“No, hang on. Wayne’s found some groups that bear out Dr Norm’s study. People in five different shark attack groups on social media agree with his findings, concurring that just before a shark attacked them, or was sighted in the water, they had eaten ice cream, only hours or maybe days before the shark attacks. And the shark attack victims’ group, Families of Surfers Killed by Shark Attacks, including their mothers, siblings, friends or partners, all signed affidavits stating their loved ones had eaten ice cream at some point leading up to the fatal attacks. Wayne is convinced that ice cream is the culprit, and he intends to picket his local ice cream shop, demonstrating until the shop closes its doors.”
Jack was watching O’Shea cleverly pull the committee members into her web that she’d woven in a highly creative fashion. In fact, Bill was getting extremely pissed off by his imaginary cousin, who, admittedly, was a real tool. Based on the expressions of one or two others, he figured this scenario might be a bit too close to home, since ironically, the conspiracy theorists were getting more vocal every day. The Flat Earthers and people who believed the moon landings were faked would no doubt have apoplexy if…when the Stargate’s existence was revealed.
Bill frowned, obviously buying into this scenario, one hundred and ten percent. It wasn’t exactly surprising, Jack concluded, seeing as how he played a lot of MMRPG and fantasy computer games in his off-duty hours on the base. From the limited knowledge O’Neill had of them, they required you to suspend belief and go with the flow.
“I explained again to Wayne that Dr Norm’s ‘study’ was poorly designed, had too few subjects and lacked controls, such as surfers who ate ice cream and went swimming or surfing but didn’t get attacked by sharks, to compare them and look at other variables and Norm’s dubious conclusions on two positively correlated variables, but weren’t causing the other variable to increase,” Bill Lee scowled.
“Go on,” Aoife encouraged him.
“So, next, I’d explain to my dumbass Cousin Wayne that anecdotal ‘evidence’ is very weak evidence, for example, it’s frequently wrong because memories fade over time and can easily be corrupted by emotions or unconscious desires to confirm personal biases,” Bill said shortly.
“Well, Cousin Wayne counters your arguments, telling you he’s been doing hundreds of hours of independent research on the internet regarding ice cream causing sharks to attack humans. He informs you that lots of people worldwide have read Dr Norm’s research and can confirm his initial finding. Wayne also says that he’s discovered over a dozen groups of shark attack survivors on Facebook and Reddit who can independently corroborate his results, having been attacked by sharks and also having eaten ice cream before the attack. “
“I’d wash my hands of him; he’s an idiot,” Bill retorted grumpily as everyone laughed at his disgruntled expression.
“Probably, but what if he started picketing the ice cream parlour at the beach and when a fellow ‘victim’ that he met there encouraged him to save innocent lives, including his own, by burning down the ice cream parlour, and he agreed. Although his fellow shark-attack victim buys the petrol and the matches and plans the whole operation, he explains that he needs Cousin Wayne to carry out the actual arson and light the match…”
Why can’t he burn down the ice cream parlour himself?” Bill asked cynically, still invested in the scenario despite his irritation at his dumbass fictitious cousin and his vow to wash his hands of Wayne.
“Ah, well, because the new guy has a wooden leg, You see he lost his own leg thirty years ago after a shark attacked him and the victim, let’s just call him ‘Phil,’ is concerned that he might set his leg on fire if he tries to burn the shop down. So, because Wayne feels sorry for his fellow ice cream mate, and he feels they’re both true believers about sharks targeting ice cream lovers. So, Wayne agrees to help Phil burn down ice cream parlours that are operating on beach esplanades along the coastline so other people won’t have to suffer the terrible trauma of shark attacks. Together, he and Phil burn down five shops – Phil is the brains in charge of planning and logistics, and Wayne is the brawn, doing the dirty work since he doesn’t have a wooden leg.
“And my dumbass cousin doesn’t have the wherewithal to plan a toddler’s party,” Bill Lee interjected cynically as everyone laughed.
“I know! It’s hard to believe you two are related,” Aoife joked. “Anyway, they had a lot more arson attacks planned, but lots of the ice cream parlours started getting nervous and voluntarily closed their stores or moved to less picturesque locations that generated less revenue. On the upside, they also weren’t being firebombed, and it ended up saving them exorbitant insurance premiums and excesses, too.” Aoife paused to take a sip of her now stewed tea, pulling a face before continuing.
“Of course, no one in this room will be surprised to hear that the empty shops on the esplanades don’t stay vacant for long, prime locations being much sought after. Soon, an existing chain of gourmet burger restaurants called Eat Your Phil was opening in all the prime beach shopfronts where all the ice cream parlours used to be.
“When the police catch up with Wayne and arrest him for firebombing the five ice cream shops, but not Phil because he was smart enough to organise for a mate to give him an alibi, Cousin Wayne is devastated, of course. He tries to explain why he did what he did. He was only trying to save the lives of shark attack victims,” Aoife explained.
His good mate, Phil of Eat Your Phil, meanwhile, holds a press conference, praising the police for catching the man responsible for the terrible destruction of property. Having newly opened his burger restaurants in the prime beachfront locations, he’s relieved that the firebug has finally been caught.”
By this stage, Bill Lee is shaking his head. “Not very bright is kinda an understatement. So, I guess my cousin ends up in the slammer? I hope he rats out that lying bastard, Phil and takes the SOB down too?”
“Yes, he goes to jail, and no, he doesn’t implicate Phil, who is Philip Grayson by the way, despite Wayne’s lawyer’s advice that he do so. A lawyer you very kindly hired and paid for, because your mother and her sister pleaded with you to help your cousin. In fact, Cousin Wayne refused to believe that Phil set him up to take the fall for the fires from the start, telling you it was a pack of lies by the media. Even when you show him the irrefutable evidence dug up by the lawyer you paid for, proving that a shark never attacked Phil, he lost his leg in a workplace accident 30 years ago, Wayne reckons it’s a fake story that the lawyer made up because that’s what they do.”
“What a tool. He must have been adopted,” Bill played along as everyone laughed.
“Or got dropped on his head as a kid.” Paul Davis joked.
“How many times?” Bill demanded.
“He also doesn’t believe Grayson started up his original burger restaurants by using the money he received as compensation after he sued his employer for negligence. Wayne is convinced that ‘Big Dairy’ has manufactured a false narrative because they are afraid people will stop eating ice cream if they find out the truth about sharks, and they set out to destroy his reputation.”
“Seriously? Big Dairy?” Bill interjected, disgusted.
“Oh yeah, they’re totally evil,” Daniel declared, deciding to join in the scenario with an air of earnestness. “I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.
Smirking at the pair, Aoife pushed on. “Even when an investigative journalist does a national television exposé about how Phil comes up with his scheme after reading about Dr Norm’s theory that ice cream caused shark attacks, Wayne refuses to believe ill of his friend. Not even when the journo produced a handwritten diary where Phil Grayson writes how he saw an easy way to force ice cream parlours in coastal towns, out of the beachfront shops, so he could set up premium burger restaurants, charge double the price because of the ocean views, Wayne denies it as a pack of lies,” Aoife said, looking bleak.
Bill looked thoroughly disgusted, quipped. “Boy, I just can’t believe we share DNA. How could he be so dumb?”
“I’d say for the same reason, people in a religious cult can’t be talked around, even with unimpeachable evidence proving they’ve been duped. Cultists invest too much time and energy, and all too often, members feel they’re privy to secret data the rest of us don’t have, which makes them feel special or super intelligent. Their sense of superiority is constantly fed by the cult leader or, in this case, grifters who see a bunch of gullible individuals who, when they’re played right, can be the gift that keeps on giving,” Eddie Yap said cynically.
Carolyn smiled grimly. “Agreed, this scenario of Wayne’s is perfect for all sorts of grifters to exploit the crap out of!”
Daniel frowned. “Okay, I can see how Wayne fell in with Grayson, if he is gullible and has poor self-esteem. But I don’t get how Dr Norm’s dodgy study proclaiming that ice cream causes shark attacks can be such a goldmine for grifters?
Eddie and Carolyn exchanged looks that might have been: ‘Can you believe this guy? How in hell did Jackson help save the world so many damn times… for real? Or maybe even, ‘Do you wanna go first or shall I?’ Jack thought, amused as he watched the very entertaining by-play between them.
For all Danny was a people person, when it came to the darker side of human nature, he could be surprisingly naïve. Carter always thought it was sweet. Jack was often despairing when, time after time, evil aliens would take advantage of how Pollyannish their friend and teammate could be.
Carolyn must have decided to be the first to enlighten Daniel about the inherent greediness of some of their fellow humans. “Well, the wellness industry would have an absolute financial boon in this scenario. Influencers posing as surfers or victims who could push supplements to detox from the terrible toxic effects of ice cream that attracts sharks to surfers. Plus, all those expensive personal protective watches that send out sonic pulses to deter sharks from approaching surfers/swimmers, just off the top of my head. And attractive swimsuit-wearing influencers who sell cheap, synthetically blended oils, but claim they’re rare essential oils that sharks absolutely loathe, so you can slather them all over your body to repel sharks. They charge you a king’s ransom to buy it,” she finished sarcastically as she rolled her eyes.
Daniel’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he leaned over to Aoife and asked, “What are influencers?”
Everyone ignored him, but Jack wasn’t surprised. Danny didn’t even own a television.
“Oh, and just for the record, so no one assumes I’m opposed to traditional medicine, I’m not, as long as they’re safe AND effective,” Lam told them pre-emptively. “My best friend from med school is a doctor and a trained aromatherapist, and I use pure lavender oil for headaches and insomnia. But I would never take advice from a wellness influencer flogging products of dubious quality who has no training.”
Scowling fiercely so no one mistook her intent, she finished up by saying firmly, “It’s the fakes, charlatans, and every wellness social media influencer…basically all the grifters I can’t abide.”
She looked at Dr Yap. “Your turn.”
“Well, I’m certain you’d have surfers flogging shark-repelling wetsuits for surfers and bathing suits for the swimmers, infused with some ‘Special Proprietary blend of secret oils and or herbal supplements like caffeine infused,’” he began with a monumental eyeroll, clearly demonstrating his thoughts on the matter. “Umm, let’s see…special surfboards that emit harmonic resonance frequencies that sharks hate, to drive them away. Umm, martial arts and MMA training classes on how to fight off a shark attack, Chakra balancing and aura cleansing sessions to help surfers drive off sharks with vibes who get overly curious,” as his audience looked more and more incredulous as the list grew.
The epidemiologist took a breath before proceeding, his voice dripping with scorn, “And here’s a perennial oldie but a goodie, advertise to all the surfers expensive and useless seminars to unlock the untapped brainpower that everyone possesses, but they only use ten per cent of. Grifters will promise to unlock all your unused brainpower to converse with the sharks and persuade, threaten or else compel the hungry/bloodthirsty beasts to piss off and leave you alone.”
Aoife, who had been chuckling up until this point, scowled fiercely. “Jesus, Joseph and Mary, I swear if I had a dollar for every time someone parroted that pop psychology, bunkum at me about humans only using ten freaking percent of our brainpower, I’d be a multimillionaire with my own private island,” she scoffed.
A lieutenant colonel, Lew Streeter, who was with the special forces contingent and up to this point tonight had remained mostly silent, interjected in surprise. “Whadda you mean by bunkum, Doc? Are ya trying to tell me it’s not true? What about all the hundreds of books and movies?”
Dr Rasmussen snorted genteelly, saying, “Maybe because it is a convenient plot device for authors and screenwriters.”
“Along with all the positive-thinking public speakers who tout it in their talks, self-help books, audio CDs, healthy eating and meditation courses or their expensive wellness retreats that charge thousands of dollars to attend. I mean, everyone wants to be smarter, no?” Aoife suggested with a long-suffering expression.
Carolyn nodded. “Oh, hell yeah! I hate those damn grifters, especially the ones who lie to desperately ill or terminal people that if they just unlock even a little bit more of their total brain capacity by doing their course or reading their books, they will be able to heal themselves.”
Aoife nodded emphatically. “Exactly. And when my neighbour lay dying with ALS, she believed it was her fault for not trying harder to develop the other ninety per cent of her brain, even though she’d handed over a hundred grand to grifters who told her that her mind had the power to heal her.”
Seeing the shocked faces around the table, she sighed. “Look, folks, this really isn’t the time or place for a lecture on how this myth evolved, but suffice it to say, there is a kernel of truth in there. At any one time, only a part or parts of our brain is being utilised, depending on what activity we are performing. But over the course of the day, we might use every part of our brain to carry out different tasks. It’s like taking a photo and then saying, because you are smiling, humans only use a small group of facial muscles and the rest of your muscles are being wasted. Then offering to teach you how to use every muscle to improve your strength or ability to work twice as long, or for athletes to improve their performance if you do their course or buy their books.”
Carolyn nodded. “Look, we know what happens when too many parts of the brain are firing simultaneously – we call that having a seizure or epilepsy. Our brains are energy hungry, using roughly 20 per cent of our caloric intake every day, which is far more than any other organ, but an average brain weighs only two percent of an individual’s body weight. One other little snippet I’ll share with you, the adage, ‘use it or lose it,’ applies to neurons, too. If humans only used ten percent of their total brain capacity, why then don’t autopsies of ordinary people show atrophied brain cells in ninety per cent of our brains?”
“And if you need more evidence, just Google ‘the ten per cent of the brain myth’ and go to town,” Aoife advised them with a roll of her eyes.
Paul Davis decided to chime in at this point. “We were discussing the illusory truth effect earlier on, Dr O’Shea, where people tend to believe false information after repeated exposure. I’m guessing that this ten percent brain fallacy is a good example?”
“It’s a perfect example. Generations have grown up with it, and they will argue that it’s absolutely true, but it’s pure donkey shite, and people get angry with you when you try to explain that.”
Bill Lee nodded, “Yeah, and there’s a 2010 episode of Myth Busters when they examined the ten per cent brain fallacy. They used magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of individuals engaged in doing a complicated mental task, and they found that as much as 35% was used during their test.”
Jack, deciding it was time to move things along, as entertaining as it was, clapped his hands together sharply, causing a few people to jump before rubbing them briskly as he quipped, “Mmm, Magnets. Gotta love those magnets, guys!”
Anyone who knew General Jonathon O’Neill, or knew of his exploits, knew that magnets featured regularly in his speech, and even those who didn’t know still joined in the laughter at Jack’s expense. Paul Davis and Daniel exchanged long-suffering looks, rolling their eyes at his antics.
O’Shea took the hint and regained control. “Well, I think we’ve established that this flawed piece of research caused a lot of people to lose their minds and spawned a lot of anti-ice cream sentiment amongst various groups with their own personal agendas. Plus, it was exploited by a bunch of grifters and industries, because even the armaments and ammunition manufacturers tried to make a profit by arguing via the powerful gun lobby and politicians that sharks should just be eliminated from the food chain.
All of it was based entirely on a single piece of research that, at best, was poorly designed and, at worst, was deliberately fraudulent, as the author of the study, who falsely claimed that ice cream caused shark attacks, finally admitted he was paid to reach that conclusion by a small electronics business that had patents pending on a device they believed would stop sharks from attacking humans. So, they enticed Dr Norms to write a research paper on shark attacks to blame people eating ice cream, to their devices, to millions of people swimming and surfing around the world, and to sweeten the pot, in addition to the fee they paid Dr Norm, they offered him five percent of the profits on every unit they sold.”
“So, tell me, what happened when my dumbass Cousin Wayne finally got out of prison? Did he admit that he’d been duped? Not just by his burger buddy, who set him up to be the fall guy, but by Dr Norm and all the grifters using the fake study to fill their own pockets?”
O’Shea smiled enigmatically, and she shook her head. “Nope. On the contrary, due to the sunk cost fallacy, Wayne had invested way too much time and energy and pissed off his family. He doubled down, insisting that Big Dairy had set the whole thing up to discredit Dr Norm, too, because he was threatening the massive profits of the ice cream industry. And he also became a distributor for the personal protection anti-shark device.”
“So did he ever reconcile with the family?” Carolyn wanted to know.
“No, because even though the journal Nature debunked Dr Norm’s study and accused him of not declaring his financial interests in the research findings, Wayne flat out refused to believe the research was fake. He accused his family of being brainwashed by the evil ice cream industry and Big Dairy, and Wayne decided they could not be saved.”
Daniel, who was always a great big softie at heart, had the last word. “Poor Wayne, he really got played for a fool.”
Bill Lee was having none of it, though, countering, “Because he was a damn fool, Dr Jackson,” he said mockingly.
Jack decided that the sheer genius of Aoife’s scenario had demonstrated here tonight, if it had done nothing else, how unlikely they were to be able to convince these damn anti-vaxxers they were wrong because, like Cousin Wayne, they had invested too much time, lost friends and family by being so paranoid about the motives of Big Pharma. They’d ignored the same motives to profit from the wellness industry that they accused the drug and vaccine companies of, which were beginning to rival the pharmaceutical giants in their ability to make huge profits out of vaccination or anti-vaccination. Finally, unscrupulous forces were quick to take advantage of their social disconnect from friends and family, due to them falling down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories such as Q-Anon and its predecessors on the dark web, 4chan and 8Chan.
In a way, looking at how gullible the human race could be, and how cruel, Jack could easily understand why so many people would be desperately invested in a myth that we had another ninety percent of our brain capacity undeveloped, since collectively, the whole damn race mentally was naïve, lazy and easily fooled. Who wouldn’t want to believe that, in terms of brain potential, we could attain a much higher standard of existence in the future? And didn’t that sound scarily like the Alterans, the Ori, the Asgard, much as he missed those little grey dudes so freaking much.
Which still left them with the massive elephant in the room, the anti-vaxxer, the Evil Emperor General Shen Xiaoyi and informed consent. Sometimes he thought they were totally screwed!
Chapter 12
Aoife looked around the conference table, at the mostly civilian personnel who she had asked to remain behind so she could discuss something with them. Having met with reluctance and realising the fatigue factor, she suggested they refuel with more coffee. That pepped up Daniel and Carolyn, not that anyone was surprised; Dr Jackson took off like a whippet on steroids to retrieve his really good stuff. Jack was a piece of cake to bribe, literally! She talked him into one final meeting on the promise of cake from the commissary, since dinner had been hours ago, and he’d cut it short to spend time with Davinia.
So, properly fortified, they’d sat back down, Paul Davis, Aoife, Daniel, Jack, Carolyn and Bill Lee, head of the project, all moving to close ranks, ending up clustered around one end of the very long table together. When Aoife gestured to Jack to take the head of the table, he wagged his finger at her playfully.
“Uh, uh, uh, Dr O’Shea. This is your circus, and I’m just one of the trained monkeys. You’re in the driver’s seat,” he said firmly as they took their seats.
The perennial gentleman, Paul, cleared his throat politely. “Ah, before we begin, I just want to clarify something. Except for myself and the general, the rest of you are all civilians, and I have to ask, should I be worried about that?”
Doctor O’Shea smiled at him innocently. “I’m not sure what you are implying, Colonel Davis.”
Jack laughed briefly, ‘I think Paul is asking if we are plotting an insurrection.”
Flashing a cheeky grin at Colonel Davis, O’Shea seemed a little sheepish. “Well, I guess that depends upon your definition of insurrection. We know those daft bureaucrats have ordered you not to vaccinate anyone who is vaccine-hesitant or an avowed anti-vaxxer, unless you get their informed consent. But how you’re supposed to do that without giving away classified secrets, I’m at a loss to figure out,” she shrugged as others nodded their agreement.
Jack and Paul remained poker-faced.
“I guess the question I would like an answer to before we get into the heavy stuff is, did your gang of 8 gobshites actually ever operationalise the term ‘informed consent,’ either specifically, verbally or in writing?”
Daniel, who was quite animated now that he had caffeine on board, side-eyed her. “What exactly are you thinking, Aoife?”
O’Shea looked around the table, noting that everybody was looking at her curiously, not just Doctor Jackson. “Just answer the question, please, General O’Neill and then I’ll explain. Did that gang of ejits operationalise their definition of informed consent?”
Looking over at Paul Davis for guidance, Jack shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so. But to be honest, Paul is the details guy. So, Colonel, did they define what informed consent meant?”
Pull shook his head, “No, I don’t believe so, but I would need to double-check the record. Can I ask why you’re so focused on definitions, Dr O’Shea?
I’m wondering how much wiggle room we have in obtaining informed consent. Would that involve them signing a form, or could it be verbal ascent?”
Paul Davis gave her an old-fashioned look. “And why would that matter, Doctor? I mean, it’s a great question, but it’s the kind of attention to detail I get paid to deal with.”
Aoife winked at Paul, who looked slightly uneasy. “Aye, that’s a good point, Colonel. But you see, I was wondering if there was some way around the issue without deliberately disobeying an order.”
Jack snarked. “And do you have any suggestions, Doctor?”
“Well, after Daniel briefed me about the unexpected hurdle this afternoon, I was just wondering if you could bring in that Alien guy who was producing that telly show, Wormhole Extreme.”
“Marty?” Jack asked in surprise. “Why are you asking?”
What if he were to approach the conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers and tell them the truth? Ask them if the Earth were facing a zombie apocalypse, and the only way to save people was with a vaccine that could save them, that had already been taken on another planet. Do you think they might agree to take it to survive?”
“Just come out and tell them the truth?” Paul looked scandalised.
“Or maybe we could use Martin to hold a fake Comic Con convention or a fake movie about zombies and send free invitations to all the known anti-vaxxers and ask them to play extras in a zombie apocalyptic science fiction movie where they learn that the whole world is in danger of being turned into mindless slaves. Then those who agreed to be in the movie get given a script where they all verbally agree to take the antidote to the evil compound that creates a zombie army to take over the world,” Caroline Lam suggested
Aoife looked at Lam approvingly. “I love how Machiavellian your thoughts are,” she crowed with pride as Carolyn looked a mite sheepish.
Everyone else was silent as they digested the idea she outlined.
Doctor Lee looked highly sceptical. “It sounds a bit sketchy, don’t you think? But if we get desperate enough, we might need to consider it, I guess.”
Looking outraged, Lam said, “I was joking, Bill,” she protested, although O’Shea didn’t necessarily believe her.
“Yes, well, desperate times call for desperate measures,” he shrugged, and the psychologist, who was good at reading people since it was her job, got the impression he wasn’t exactly averse to the proposal either, even if it was sketchy.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Well, if we’re pulling crazy plans out of our asses, what about sending robot versions of Martin Lloyd, our alien director, to talk directly to the anti-vaxxers and tell them the situation individually. Drs Fargo and Martens could probably whip up fifty or so Marty’s on Balar for us. If there are no witnesses to back up their claims aside from the other anti-vaxxer crowd, who’s gonna believe them?”
As the rest of the group considered Jack’s flippant suggestion, Aoife grinned at how the ‘out of the box’ suggestions had been multiplied, and decided to hit them with the really serious one that the psychologists and the profilers had nutted out over a late-night game of poker a few days ago when Dave Rossi returned to Atlantis with a bottle of Redbreast 12 Year Old Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey. If she and A.J. Chegwidden weren’t already together, she might have thought about making a play for the handsome Italian New Yorker. It had been a grand night!
“On a slightly more serious level, a few of us were tossing around some ideas about how to convince people back on Earth to get vaccinated late one night on Atlantis. Someone suggested creating a conspiracy theory website with an anonymous figure posting bizarre conspiracy theories that the government was trying to drastically reduce population numbers by convincing people that vaccines were dangerous. We could post this zombie vaccine story as well because the only ones likely to take it seriously are the conspiracy nutters.”
Jack looked pensive. He couldn’t believe he was giving this crazy idea of Aoife’s some consideration. “It might work, just like the powers that be allowed Wormhole Extreme to go ahead, paving the way for future declassification of the Stargate. No one in their right mind would believe a zombie apocalypse was real, and the anti-vaxxers would probably be ignored right up until we declassify the whole kit and Kaboodle.”
Carolyn nodded. “True, General. And the whole narrative of The Government trying to use vaccine hesitancy for a drastic reduction in the population is something that they would definitely buy into in their hyper-paranoid state. It’s a conspiracy theory they’d probably grab hold of with both hands.”
Daniel looked a mite conflicted. “Is it ethical for us to feed their paranoia?”
“Perhaps not, Dr Jackson, but on the other hand, you heard Dr O’Shea just like we did. These so-called vaccine-hesitant people are effectively going to need to be deprogrammed like cult members,” Davis said bluntly. “They aren’t likely to be persuaded by using logic or even rock-solid scientific data to disprove the lies they’ve been fed for years now. In fact, the harder we try to convince them of the truth, the more they’ll double down and feel ‘special’ because they reject the facts.”
“Colonel Davis is correct,” Aoife said grimly. “Don’t forget many have had their friends and family trying to pull them back from their crackpot views for years, but it just drives them further down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Mostly, like Cousin Wayne, their people end up washing their hands of them. So that leaves the anti-vaxxers altogether in their loony-tunes conspiracy theory echo chamber, where their views become increasingly bizarre and disconnected from reality.”
“It’s going to take a massive effort, in terms of resources, financial and professional, thrown at it, if there is any hope of salvaging these lost souls. At this point, we have neither. We don’t have the time,” Bill said, soberly.
Several people nodded their agreement, but Daniel looked torn.
“Do you remember that cult, North of Seattle, where we tracked down that Goa’uld Seth not long after Sam’s dad and Selmak blended?”
Daniel nodded. “Of course. And that ATF Special Agent was super pissed off when you pulled strings and got yourself deputised as a federal agent, and POTUS put you in charge of infiltrating the cult’s compound. Boy, was he furious!”
Jack smirked. “Yes, he was. But anyway, those fifty people that we rescued all needed deprogramming. Do you remember Tommy Levinson and his father, Jason?”
“Sure, Levinson was determined to go in when we infiltrated through the underground tunnels. He was so happy to get his kid back,” he said with a wistful sigh, because Daniel’s father died when he was a young boy.
“Yeah, he was happy, but it was an illusion. Tommy’s been in and out of drug rehab and ended up in two other cults, looking for a place to belong ever since,” Jack said grimly
“You keep in touch with Tommy?” Daniel looked surprised.
“His dad, Jason. I’ve kept in touch with all the victims.” Jack replied. Seeing Daniel’s look of surprise. Jack said, “What? We saved fifty people, Space Monkey, who saw Seth kill people, and they witnessed his eyes glow gold. Of course, the SCG tracked their progress and made sure they were doing okay.”
“And are they?” Daniel asked, obviously surprised.
“Some are doing okay, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing for any of them. Lots of drug and alcohol addicts, four or five ended up having multiple stays in mental hospitals and being medicated. Three people committed suicide,” Jack told him dourly.
“Wow, I didn’t have a clue. I guess I assumed once we freed them and killed Seth, they’d all go home, get help and go back to living normal lives,” he said, looking guilty.
Aoife chimed in, “The thing you need to remember, Daniel, is that cult leaders have a sixth sense where victims are concerned. They’re able to suss out people who feel like outsiders and offer them a refuge. They make them feel special and give them a family to belong to…and they also abuse them mentally, physically and often sexually, using sophisticated mind control techniques that make it extremely difficult for victims to break away and leave the cult and its leader. Many of these people weren’t in a good headspace to begin with, and some will continue to struggle for a long time,” she explained sadly
“So, all these conspiracy theorists, we can’t fix them?”
“Not overnight, and some never will be ‘fixed.’ They have to want to be helped, and until they are willing to even entertain the idea that they’ve been sucked in by a bunch of frauds and grifters who don’t give a feck about them and are just using religion, politics, vaccines, flat earth theory or whatever conspiracy they’re promoting this week to control them, their wallets, minds and bodies for their own evilness. Until then, trying to convince them otherwise runs the very real risk of pushing them even further down the rabbit hole,” the psychologist said pragmatically, because as much as she wanted to save people, unless they wanted help, any aid she provided wouldn’t help.
Daniel looked suitably depressed as he said, “So, setting up a false conspiracy site despite it being morally questionable to peddle false narratives might be the best option we have to convince the anti-vaxxers that the bullshit about vaccines is actually the government’s attempt at population control?”
“It’s a possibility,” Carolyn conceded. “We are going to need to look at these options, including the other even crazier ones, plus mass detention centres in greater depth, aren’t we, General? She looked at Jack, who shrugged.
“Just what I was hoping for,” he snarked. “More experts and more meetings! What’s not to love?”
After that conversational hot potato, everyone was morosely silent before Aoife decided to send everyone off for the night. Tomorrow will arrive soon enough.
“Will you be staying here on earth, Jack?” she inquired softly.
“Unfortunately,” he confirmed rather morosely.
Most people who’d remained behind for the extra meeting understood why he would like nothing better than to be going back to Atlantis with the rest of the Lantean contingent tomorrow. It was obvious that he missed his family a great deal and missed hugging his baby granddaughter, who had been an unexpected but precious gift from an alternate universe, already destroyed by the Zombie mind control drug. Unfortunately, they all understood that his need to see Sarah would have to wait a little bit longer until he’d found a way to deal with the problem of the anti-vaxxers dumped in his lap by President Walsh and the Gang of Eight. The problem was so much bigger than he’d ever imagined.
~o0o~
As he said goodnight and made his way back to his quarters, Jack brooded on the fact that he wasn’t only unhappy about not seeing Baby Sarah and Cassie, but also Lauren and Gia Kawalsky. He was also very disappointed that he couldn’t tear strips off Colonel Lorne for the pilot having designs upon Cassandra Frasier, who was like a daughter to him.
Jack also wanted to tear strips off a large number of individuals who’d all professed ignorance about Cassie’s lover when he questioned them. They couldn’t all have been in the dark about it, as Davinia said everyone knew about Casie and Lorne, which was eventually how Jack finally found out about them, since Vinia assumed he did too. Unfortunately, it would have to wait until later as there were more critical things for him to focus on right now. However, Jack made a mental note to ask Paul if he could keelhaul Colonel Lorne, even if he was in the Air Force, not the Navy.
Jack knew they’d done a lot of crucial work today, even if he was exhausted. Detailed plans were in place to start the worldwide immunisation schedule in three days. They would begin immunising the general public via a variety of methods, now that most of the doses, drones, humanoid and canine robot dispersal units had been shipped to Earth. It was going to be a massive undertaking, but the sooner they began, the sooner Earth would be safeguarded.
Deciding to take a quick shower before heading to bed, he thought about Aoife’s presentation tonight – the crazy assed one about obtaining informed consent from the nutters as she called them in their extracurricular meeting, and the earlier more scientific one, explaining how difficult it would be to change the attitudes of the anti-vaxxers who had so much riding on maintaining their mistaken beliefs. Both had been amusing, even though the topic was deadly serious. Jack had studied the internment camps that the US had created for people who were Japanese or of Japanese descent, and knew they’d been high-handed, brutal and many of those who were interned during the Second World War returned home at the end, to find their homes and farms gone.
He couldn’t believe the Gang of Eight were going to force him to build massive internment camps for families. But what other choice was there for such a huge number of people? While some of Aoife’s crazy ass ideas might work, there probably wouldn’t be enough time to change all of the vaccine-hesitant people living in the USA. So, internment camps would be a necessity, and he felt ashamed.
As he stepped under the hot water, trying to wash away the emotions of the day so that he could get a few hours of sleep before he had to get up and order ten times the number of internment facilities as he’d initially planned, he did give serious thought to contacting Martin Lloyd tomorrow and see if he’d be up for getting involved in trying to change some attitudes.
As he climbed into bed after towelling himself dry, barely noticing the scratchy military towels, accustomed as he was to them up until his departure to the fleshpots of DC, he switched off the bedside lamp and went to sleep. Well, that had been the plan, but sleep was elusive; the more you chased it, the harder it tried to get away. Finally, he gave up trying; instead, grinning to himself in the dark as he recalled the night Carter explained to their Jaffa teammate the difference between causation and correlation.
SG-1 had been on a mission to PAF-374 and had spent much of the night crowded into a tiny cave on a planet with lots of rocks and trees. And very little else…aside from ruins with some writing on them that made Daniel blissfully happy. He’d also insisted, as per normal, that the ruins were imperative for understanding the cosmos and, therefore, they needed to spend another day on this forsaken planet so he could record the indecipherable writing on them. Personally, Jack thought the ‘writings looked like some inebriated woodpecker had carried out a frenzied attack on the ruins, but what did he know?
So, they’d started out building a regular campsite with tents and everything. Then the rains came, and they flooded out their perfect campsite and washed away most of their gear. They’d taken refuge in a cave that was barely big enough to fit them all in, but at least they’d been dry. Like so many times before, they ended up talking about why Earth had effective vaccines for childhood diseases, and why any parents would let their children skip getting the vaccines that would protect them. Teal’c was genuinely puzzled by their attitudes and wanted to know why someone would want their children to contract diseases like measles or whooping cough that might kill not just their own children, but other people, too.
Carter had been explaining the difference between correlation and causality to their Jaffa teammate. She’d picked handwriting proficiency in students attending middle school, which revealed an unexpected, yet statistically significant, positive correlation with students’ hand size. Students with larger hands had much better handwriting, and kids with smaller hand size had poorer handwriting skills.
Then she challenged them (well, Teal’c really, because he and Danny already knew the answer) to explain which one caused the other variable and why.
Teal’c, being a massive mountain of a Jaffa, with muscles on his muscles, immediately fell into the trap Carter had laid for him. Carter could be sneaky like that! Despite looking so innocent. Of course, Teal’c assumed that might meant right, stating that bigger hands made handwriting more legible. After letting him try to prove his theory all the way through their MRE rations of meatloaf and dessert of stewed fruit with what was supposed to be custard (but Jack had privately vowed to send it to the food techies on base for identification), poor Teal’c was getting visibly frustrated, which truly spoke volumes about his level of aggravation.
Every possible theory he proposed to explain why big hands facilitated good handwriting, Sam swiftly bulldozed, armed with science and logic. Plus, she already knew the two variables had zero impact on each other, since a third variable was responsible for their strong correlation. As they settled in by the campfire with their coffee (which was excellent because hey, Daniel didn’t drink the crappy stuff that SG teams were issued on missions), and Teal’c was settled with a cup of non-caffeinated peppermint tea that he averred was good for digestion, Carter finally let him off the hook.
“Nope, that’s not the reason why, either, Teal’c,” she shook her head, her eyes intensely blue in the firelight.
Giving her the equivalent of a Jaffa’s ‘I wish I could throttle you, but you are a friend and ally, and I am a Jaffa Warrior, so therefore I must restrain myself,’ look (and one the team was pretty used to, at this point), he replied, with icy politeness. “Then I am afraid that I’m crisp out of ideas, Captain Carter,” resulting in confused expressions.
“Fresh outta ideas, Buddy,” Jack corrected mildly, used to the Jaffa mangling his English idioms sometimes.
Not that he was one to talk, when it came to scientific gobbledygook that Carter and Daniel routinely spouted off, he was known to commit the odd malapropism or three when trying to contribute to their more technical discussions. Although, mind you, sometimes it was entirely intentional, as Jack liked to be underestimated. It often had its uses, and he sometimes wondered if Teal’c was playing a similar game as well. Still, Jack never called him on it, because far be it from him to be a hypocritical jackass. A jackass…yeah, sureyabetcha, but never a hypocritical one!
Meanwhile, their stoic Jaffa teammate fixed him with a half-hearted glare. “That was what I said, O’Neill. I do not know why larger hands lead to better handwriting,” he said with seemingly endless patience.
Jack was pretty sure at this point their friend’s limits had been reached, though and sent the captain his colonel stare that warned her it was time to end this already. A slight shift of her head told him she got the message; Sam had probably already realised it had gone on long enough.
She pulled a Ziplock bag full of dried fruit out of her pack as a peace offering, knowing that Teal’c had a weakness for Earth’s wide array of fruit. Of course, a lot of it didn’t travel well, so she offered him hers with a Carter smile that melted harder hearts than Teal’c.
“Sorry for teasing you, Teal’c,” she apologised ruefully. “A larger hand size does not cause handwriting to improve. In childhood, the older you are, the bigger your hand grows, and the more you write, the better your handwriting usually becomes. Neither one causes the other; they just occur simultaneously as the child ages,” she explained penitently, as she took a dried piece of mango from the dried fruit salad she’d given him, which he politely offered around the campfire.
After several minutes of silence, when they all chewed their fruit, he finally spoke. “I see. That makes sense, and yet I did not see what was right in front of my face. I was too busy trying to make the facts fit my theory. I failed to consider that something else was in play, in this case, physical maturation. For a warrior in a life-or-death battle, such a course of action could prove very costly. I thank you, Captain Carter, for teaching me a lesson I will not soon forget,” he said with a deep bow of his head.
Of course, that memory led Jack to reminisce about one of the really rare occasions when Carter lost her temper with the gentle Jaffa, who’d been asking about a flawed study he’d been reading.
“Sorry for snapping at you, Teal’c,” she apologised to him awkwardly after a few minutes’ silence. “It’s a massive bugbear of mine when people who should know better fail to distinguish between robust correlations and assign a cause-and-effect relationship that never existed between two unrelated variables. When it happens in science, it’s not just an unfortunate oversight, especially not in this case. It’s never just a harmless disagreement between scientists, either. Science isn’t supposed to work that way.”
“How so, Captain Carter, if it is permissible for me to ask this question?” Teal’c had asked, obviously cautious about upsetting his normally unruffled teammate.
Gifting him with one of her hundred-watt smiles, albeit an embarrassed one, as she tried to explain the tenets of science, not just to a non-scientist or novice, but an Alien from a militaristic society where science was not really a thing. Yeah, science still happened, but inventors, researchers and engineers didn’t publish their findings, holding them up to the mass scrutiny of their peers. If something worked, well, the Goa’uld let their lo’taurs or Jaffa live, maybe giving them residences to reward them. If it didn’t work, then they died at the hands of their so-called gods, who punished them for failure. Jack knew that this had been how Teal’c father, who was First Prime of Chronos, lost his life.
“Because no responsible ethical researchers can overlook published findings just because they disagree with their results or find them to be flawed. Ethically, they must conduct research that proves the study is mistaken. Yet for one dodgy study that makes controversial claims, like the one suggesting that the MRR vaccine was linked to autism, there are dozens, even hundreds of researchers, trying to reproduce that one study, either trying to replicate it or to disprove its findings.”
“You state this study was badly designed, so why would other scientists waste precious time trying to replicate a poorly designed piece of research? This does not seem wise,” Teal’c said, looking confused; one eyebrow rising, an obvious Jaffa tell. (Or maybe it was just a Teal’c tell, Jack guessed silently.)
“Because often it’s the quickest way to prove or disprove a theory, by repeating it. If the data is true, then you should get the same results every time. Plus, some researchers repeated the study but fixed some of the issues – for example, they used a much larger sample than 12 cases, or they also included a control group.”
“I see,” Teal’c acknowledged.
Sam nodded. “If the research can be reproduced, then it becomes part of scientific fact, but it is always harder to refute findings that are published in a scientific journal, especially when they relate to human health.”
And why would that be, Captain Carter?” Teal’c asked curiously.
“Well, for one thing, because of how much oxygen…um, attention the media gives it. Most research findings generate zero publicity except within the specific scientific discipline the researcher belongs to,” Daniel chimed in. “Except, of course, when an obscure archaeologist makes outrageous claims about the pyramids being giant landing platforms for alien spaceships,” he admitted wryly.
Sam had shot Daniel with a look of sympathy. “Yeah, except when aliens are mentioned and then the media is all over it like a rash,” she confirmed sympathetically. The irony is that everyone thought Daniel was batshit crazy, even though he got a lot of publicity. In the case of the MRR vaccine study, it gave parents of children on the autism spectrum something or someone to blame – Big Pharma for creating an unsafe vaccine to make money. If the theory were true, then stopping kids from getting autism would be a simple fix.”
Jack, who had stayed silent during the conversation up to this point, snorted cynically. It was a gift! “And if there’s one thing that humans love, my Jaffa friend, it’s a neat and simple-to-execute fix to complex problems. So, people seize on the convenient scapegoat, with all the enthusiasm of a tribe of hungry cannibals welcoming in a well-fed troop of missionaries, to partake a meal with them.”
“A meal of goat?” Teal’c had asked slyly, which of course resulted in a slight detour from the topic to explain the Taur’i expression. Mind you, Jack had a sneaking suspicion their Jaffa teammate was messing with them, even if he smirked at the Jaffa and kept his suspicions to himself.
“It also carries real-world implications. Serious implications!” their normally even-tempered astrophysicist ranted, still obviously furious.
“I see. Could you explain what it is that has made you so angry?” Teal’c asked respectfully.
“Misinterpreting a robust statistical relationship as proof of a causal mechanism could lead to poor public health policies, such as banning vaccination programs to stop children catching preventable diseases such as measles, which can kill or leave children disabled. Then there’s the waste of resources on ineffective treatments and the horrific consequences of the dissemination of erroneous scientific conclusions,” Sam concluded, looking and sounding decidedly pissed off at the prospect of more children failing to take advantage of a vaccine that might save their own or someone else’s life.
As he thought of Sam’s passion and disgust at the notion of unethical researchers, he loved how much people mattered to her. Feeling a familiar stab of grief threatening to overwhelm him, he couldn’t give in to it. Earth needed to be saved, again, even if this time it had to be done without her presence.
As he did every night before drifting off to sleep, he thought about Sarah and Cassie and the priceless gift his son from an alternate world had given him. Before the Gang of Eight had ruined his plans, he’d hoped to spend the weekend back where his heart now considered home, since the star city in Pegasus held all the people that were dear to him. Except for Sam…but he refused to go there tonight!
Instead, he recalled Bill Lee joking tonight about the anti-vaxxers and sharing a quote he’d seen somewhere by someone who called Christoper Penn, whoever he was when he was at home, who remarked, “Given the abundance of neurodivergent people in science, it’s far more likely that autism causes vaccines.”
Bill thought it was hilarious, and Jack wondered if perhaps he was neurodivergent too. It probably went a long way in explaining his awkwardness and his quirky thinking.
