The extracurricular activities of the middle school students in the “Backpack Club” are anything but ordinary! Fueled by their curiosity, love of science, and an extraordinary backpack, they travel through time searching for answers their science class can’t provide.
Near-peer audio readings are by a high school student, B. Fannin.
The story has been divided into 10 pages. Click on the Tabs below to view the pages.
Summer sat at her desk while twirling a pen around her fingers.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Her computer was making that weird computerized noise that marked an incoming online conference call. She accepted the call, and small pictures of Jace and KT popped up on her screen. Summer and KT were her two best friends. Together, they formed the time-traveling Backpack Club. The friends loved to learn and often time-traveled to solve problems or research topics.
“Hi!” Summer exclaimed while waving to the camera. Ugh. I miss my friends. Having to see them through a screen just isn’t the same. “I miss you guys.”
“Hey. Yeah, I know. What month is this now?” Jace asked.
“Ugh. It feels like month one hundred,” KT complained.
The group hadn’t been able to see each other in person since schools shut their doors four months ago because of a raging pandemic caused by a new virus called the coronavirus. The kids still had to go to school, but they all met virtually now.
“So, does anyone have any idea what we should research for this project?” Summer asked.
“Well, I think we have to make a presentation about a disease and its treatment or prevention,” Jace said.
“Oh! I just saw this article online about how some researchers are testing a vaccine for the coronavirus on themselves! Maybe we could talk about that. Here, let me share my screen, so you guys can see the article,” KT said.
Summer sighed. I can’t believe that she actually believes that. Summer loved all things related to science and devoured all science-related readings she came across. “KT, that article can’t be true. Testing a vaccine on oneself goes against the standards of clinical trials. All medications and vaccines have to undergo clinical trials because they’re the gold standard of medicine.”
Jace heard the irritation in Summer’s voice. He quickly said, “Look, KT. This website is a known satire website. It’s not reputable at all.” He smiled comfortingly, trying to lessen the tension in their group.
“Ok,” KT conceded. “You may be right, but clinical trials haven’t always been the best.”
“That’s not true!” Summer exclaimed, exasperated. “Give me one good example of a bad clinical trial.”
“Jenner,” KT matter-of-factly stated.
“What?! Jenner was a pioneer! He conducted the first-ever clinical trial! We have safe medications and vaccines now because of him,” Summer argued.
“He did conduct the first clinical trial, but his methods weren’t very ethical,” KT said. She was still sharing her screen with her friends, so they could all see her opening her internet browser to pull up a webpage about Jenner. “Look. It says right here.” She dragged her cursor across the paragraph she wanted to point out. “Jenner inoculated his first patient with cowpox, and he didn’t even know if it was going to work!”
“KT, you can’t make that argument using information from Wikipedia. It’s not always reputable,” Summer said.
Ugh. Summer always thinks she knows everything. KT was getting frustrated. “Fine! Why don’t we just travel, so you can see for yourself,” she said as she leaned back in her chair, trying to physically distance herself from the argument.
“Ok, ok.” Jace interjected. “Calm down. We’re all friends here. I agree with KT. We should just travel to see what really happened. But, we can’t all travel together because we are still all socially isolating. So, who wants to go?”
“I’ll do it,” Summer said. Jenner is the father of clinical trials. There’s no way that he just inoculated someone without knowing the vaccine was safe.
Summer smiled and looked out the window, watching the mask-clad Jace waving before turning around and walking down her driveway. I wish we could just talk for a few minutes. Jace had left the backpack that housed the microprocessor that allowed them to time travel on her porch. She wheeled herself over to her front door and pulled the backpack onto her lap. She turned around and made her way to the empty guest bedroom.
She unzipped the backpack and folded down the front of it, exposing the keyboard and microprocessor. Summer took a deep breath to calm her nerves. You got this. This was the first time she had ever traveled alone, so she was understandably nervous. She placed her fingers on the key combination that would hurdle her through time: ESCAPE, TABS, and CAPS LOCK. Mission accepted. Let’s do this. She depressed the keys and then felt the familiar tug pull her through time to 1796.
Summer slowly opened her eyes. She blinked. Time traveling was bright, and her eyes were taking a little bit of time to adjust. She breathed deeply, calming her nerves. She smelled hay and dirt. Looking around, she saw stalls of dairy cows. They noticed her looking at them, and they moo’d at her as if they were saying hi. They probably just want food, Summer thought.
Clang. Summer jumped as she heard a loud metallic sound behind her. She looked around, trying to find a place to hide. She noticed an empty stall, so she rolled herself over and hid in the stall. Soon, a man walked by, holding a small bowl in his hand.
“James! Where are you, boy?” The man called out.
“I’m over here, sir.” A small, timid voice responded.
Summer peeked over the top of the stall and saw a man walk past her towards a small boy who was sitting on a chair. Near the boy stood a dairy maid holding a rope tied to a cow. Summer worked through identifying the people in her head. She knew that Edward Jenner would be here to inoculate a little boy, James, with cowpox. That little boy must be James Phipps. If that’s James, then that man must be Jenner!
As Jenner drew closer, he started talking, as if he was teaching a class. “As both of you know, smallpox is very dangerous and deadly, so it’s imperative that we find a way to prevent it. Normally, to prevent smallpox, we expose someone to a small amount of smallpox pus, but this is dangerous. Many people still die from this small exposure.”
“James, I’m going to expose you to this pus from Sarah Nelms,” Jenner said as he gestured to the young woman standing next to them. “She’s a dairy maid and recently got cowpox.” Jenner prattled on as he walked over to Sarah to scrape some of the open sores on her arms.
Jenner turned his back on Sarah to face James. “So, I’m going to inoculate you with cowpox to test my hypothesis,” Jenner concluded.
“Wh-why do you think this will work, sir?” The young boy asked, his voice still wavering.
“It’s very common for dairy maids to get cowpox, but they hardly ever get smallpox. Remember, cowpox has very similar symptoms to smallpox, but they are much more mild. Which makes me think the two illnesses are related. You’ll probably get a little sick, but you shouldn’t get as sick as if I had exposed you to smallpox,” Jenner explained.
“Are you sure?” James asked.
“We can’t ever be completely sure of anything,” Jenner said, attempting to be reassuring. Jenner walked in front of Summer’s line of view, so she couldn’t see James sitting on the stool anymore. Jenner leaned over, and Summer could tell he was doing something with his hands. She assumed he was inoculating James.
“Let me see your other arm, boy,” Jenner said. “Come back in six weeks, and we will start the second phase. At that time, I’ll expose you to smallpox to test the cowpox inoculation. If this works, we can try this with other people. We have the potential to save a lot of people.” Jenner stood up and turned towards Summer.
Summer quickly bent over, hiding behind the wooden walls of the stall. Her heart was beating rapidly, but she couldn’t tell if it was from fear of being caught or shame of knowing KT was right. Jenner only tested on Phipps? She had always thought that James was just the first boy that Jenner inoculated, not that he was the only boy. He didn’t know if it was going to work? I can’t believe that he just inoculated James without testing it on animals first, having more people in the study, or even having a control patient! Summer was mulling over all the differences between Jenner’s clinical trial and what clinical trials look like today.
“Sarah! I’m done here. You can take Blossom back to her stall now,” Jenner called out to the dairymaid waiting near James.
I need to get out of here before I get caught! Summer quickly looked down at the backpack. She quickly placed her fingers on the key sequence that would take her home. She took a deep breath and whispered, “Mission completed. Let’s go home.” She pressed ESCAPE, TAB, CAPS LOCK, and RETURN and was pushed backward as a force pulled her back to her own time.
Summer sat at her desk, exhausted. She was tired from the trip but was even more so from her argument with KT. Thinking back, she couldn’t understand why she had gotten so worked up in the first place.
I’ve just been so on edge since the pandemic started. She thought to herself as she rubbed her temples. I just wanted to make sure KT wasn’t spreading misinformation. She felt her cheeks flood with heat as she thought about the wasted trip. I traveled all that way just to prove a point… Well, just to be proven wrong… “Ugh, let’s just get this over with,” she mumbled before reluctantly starting another conference call with Jace and KT.
A few moments later, KT’s face pops up on her screen. “Well?” KT said with a smug smile on her face. “What did you find?”
Summer felt her cheeks flush. “You were right. Jenner didn’t follow the modern standards for clinical trials.”
KT beamed on the other side of the screen.
Summer hated admitting she was wrong. But she knew that doing so is a hallmark of being a good scientist. So, she bit back her pride and told her friends everything she’d seen with Jenner.
Summer concluded, “Yes, Jenner knew the risk when he injected James with smallpox—It could have killed him. But he thought it was a small risk based on his hypothesis that smallpox and cowpox are related illnesses. And we know now that nothing happened to James afterward.”
“But what did happen to him?” KT worryingly asked.
Jace chimed in after a few faint clicks of his keyboard. “After James was inoculated with cowpox, he developed a mild fever, some discomfort, and a cold, but he quickly recovered. Like Summer mentioned, cowpox was really mild.”
“Right,” Summer said as he shared his screen with her so they could see the same article. “In a few weeks, Jenner returned to the dairy and inoculated James with smallpox, but he didn’t develop any symptoms.”
Summer continued, “Bottom line is, this was the first trial, so there were no precedents, no standards or guidelines, no institutions to orchestrate or monitor his process. Since then, we’ve added all kinds of regulations to make clinical trials much safer and more reliable.”
Summer quickly began listing all the characteristics of clinical trials that made them the gold standard. “First, vaccines or medications have to be tested on animals in preclinical trials. Once the vaccine or medication is proven safe in animal models, researchers move on to randomized trials on human volunteers to prove the effectiveness and safety in humans.”
“Don’t forget that both the researchers and the participants don’t know which participants get which medication. They ‘double-blind’ themselves so that the researchers or participants don’t accidentally misinterpret the results,” Jace interjected.
“Right. It’s also important that clinical trials use a large number of people. They have at least three different randomized trials that use increasingly larger populations. Only after a drug or vaccine has been shown to be effective and safe in a large group of people over many years can it be submitted for FDA approval.”
KT sat there, thinking over all the information Summer and Jace had just thrown her way.
“So, it’s pretty unlikely that a researcher would give themselves the vaccine, huh?” KT asked.
“Yeah,” answered Summer. “It wouldn’t be a clinical trial if there weren’t enough people for a control group vs an experimental group.”
“Plus,” added Jace, “If there are drugs or vaccines being developed, they’re likely still in the preclinical phases.”
KT nodded and then looked suspiciously at Summer. “Are you sure you didn’t come in contact with any smallpox? Maybe you should still shower or something, just in case.”
Summer rolled her eyes. Due to decades long global vaccination programs, smallpox is now eradicated, but she didn’t want to argue with KT again. “OK. I’m signing off now to take a shower. Bye.”
ALL sections
- Main Menu
- Overview
- Essential Knowledge: Scientific Methods
- Essential Knowledge: Clinical Trials Explained
- Essential Knowledge: Phases of Clinical Trials
- Essential Knowledge: Research Concepts
- Essential Knowledge: Costs of Clinical Trials
- Essential Knowledge: Clinical Trials Case Study
- Backpack Adventures
- Make a Note of That
- Meet a Scientist
- Practice
- Real Science Review
- Scientist videos
