So we got smallpox eliminated, and maybe soon we'll get polio too. That brings our total to 2. And in the mean time nature throws in a couple more (SARS and Avian flu) to keep us under. In our fight against nature, we don't really seem to winning. Even though we managed to eliminate a huge proportion of mortality due to infectious diseases, nature comes back with non-communicable diseases that is now affecting younger and younger populations. So really why are we going against the inevitable?
Maybe our whole strategy is wrong. Think about it, we come up with antibiotics, and mutant bacteria come about; we come up with new medical technologies, and the cost of implementing these technologies makes us leave the poor (which makes a huge portion of the population) behind. Perhaps it is time to consider the fact that we are simply not made to live that long.
Maybe it's time for a strategy that even a 9 year kid knows about. When I played basketball as a nine year old, I was always up against older kids, but here's my winning strategy--I always joined the team that had the better players. The truth is that I was too insignificant to really affect the game much, so I could decide who I wanted to play with, and I always picked the bigger, taller, faster team. And really in the whole grand scheme of things, humans are really too insignificant to affect the game much--so why do we always pick the losing team just because we are too stubborn to admit that we are simply not made to live forever... why are we picking nature's team already?
I am not saying that we should start hugging trees, and kissing whales, but I am saying that we should start thinking about how we are going to work with what we already have, and cooperating with nature to advance the human race, rather than fighting nature all the time. For starters, we should consider not trying to destroy the environment all the time--Al Gore would probably do a better presentation of this than I can. But beyond protecting our environment, we might have to reconsider ways we can change the whole way we run things. Taking education as an example, rather than trying to just put everyone through decades of education and then have nature take a large proportion of those lives before they become productive, it might be a better idea to have a larger proportion of our population finish their education quickly, and start being productive at younger ages before nature whisks them away. Of course the abridged education would imply that we might have to engage in new and different industries from what we have now, and that's a whole other issue. But the point is that if nature isn't giving us enough time to advance the human race, then we should really consider working with what we're given.
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But life expectancy has been steadily increasing in every part of the world except parts of Africa and the former Soviet Union. The fact is as bad as things seem in our Public Health course work, we're not losing. We've been winning for a long time. The people losing are the ones dying at before their 1st birthday in Africa, and thats why I feel thats were we should focus.
Very interesting insight Wilson. I agree with Payam that we aren't losing all battles, but there has never been any harm done in attempting to listen to what the earth is telling us and making sure to take care of it as we take care of ourselves.
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