Recently, the New Yorker ran an article
about the microbial world and its effect on humans. A particular insight from
the piece caught my attention: Every
disease is the result, in some way, of political and scientific choices.
This is absolutely true. We continue to inordinately prioritize advances
in lucrative chronic medications over new antibiotics and other medicines which
save lives but for which there is an “insufficient market.” And of course, we continue
to spend gargantuan portions of our resources on killing each other in armed
conflict instead of doing the intensive work of making scientific breakthroughs. Such choices enable the microbial world, which
has an almost 3.5 billion
year head start on humanity, to go on causing unnecessary deaths, with
untold millions more to come if it comes to pass that our current antibiotics
succumb to resistant bacteria.
It’s easy to blame fate or God for the diseases that
ravage us. But in truth, the real
culprit is our penchant for money and madness.
That is the illness for which we are nowhere near finding a cure.
