We're All Gonna Die
I went to a talk on campus the other night by Laurie Garrett, a prize-winning journalist, commentator, and author of a couple of books about infectious diseases and public health issues. I haven't read the books, but if the talk is any guide, they must be phenomenally depressing.
A rough outline of the talk, from memory:
- Biological warfare is very scary.
- We're not prepared for biological attacks at all.
- The Soviets had a huge bioweapons program, and nobody knows where most of the scientists from it have gotten to.
- Even without biological warfare, diseases are rampant.
- Poor countries are disease-ridden hell-holes, with no jobs, inadequate medical care, and no clean water.
- The public health infrastructure in poor countries is utterly inadequate to stop the spread of diseases like Ebola.
- Worse yet, AIDS is sweeping through Africa like wildfire.
- AIDS is sweeping through Russia, too, borne by IV drug users.
- AIDS is spreading through all of Asia, for that matter.
- We're all going to die horribly.
OK, I added that last item. But she stopped just short of actually saying that, and more than a few people have noted that that was pretty much the point of the whole talk.
It was a tremendously frustrating talk to listen to, though, because it really wasn't much more than a list of bad situations around the world that are only getting worse. She would occasionally throw in caveats like "If nothing is done..." or "Unless aid is provided...", but basically, it was just one long litany of doom and gloom. She almost got through the question period without saying anything about what can be done, too, but I shouted from the back of the room to squeeze in one more question, and asked "What can we do about this stuff? Who do we send money to? What do we tell our representatives to vote for?"
Even more annoyingly, her answer, well, wasn't an answer. She quoted some activist or another (I missed the name) who she credited with coining the ubiquitous slogan "Think Globally, Act Locally," and went off on a weird tangent about how people shouldn't drink bottled water, but should demand that our tap water be safe to drink. Which really makes about as much sense as telling children "Eat your vegetables, there are children starving in Africa." Given that the disparity between living conditions in Western countries and the developing world was one of her major points, I find it hard to see how better tap water in Schenectady is going to help-- if anything, it would seem to be making the gap worse, not better...
(This non-answer was prefaced by an "I get that question a lot..." Yeah, well, if you get that question a lot, you might want to think about adding something to the talk to head it off...)
My dissatisfaction with the talk probably has a lot to do with the difference between being a journalist and being an experimental scientist. Her job is to report on things, not solve the problems she's reporting on. My job is all about solving problems, usually by hitting something with a laser (or possibly hitting a laser with something blunt and heavy...). I don't know how to do anything especially useful to the problems she's discussing, but still, my basic attitude is that for any problem, there's something that can be done to fix it, and what we need to do is figure out what that is, and get to work on it.
I was especially disappointed because the audience was partly made up of college students (there were more faculty than students there, I think, but there were some students). These are the people that need to be reached-- they're young, they're smart, they're energetic, and they're impressionable. So impress them, energize them, send them out to do... something. Don't just rattle off depressing statistics-- give them something to do to make the world a better, safer place. That's what college students are for.
Instead, we got a litany of horrors, followed by vague platitudes. Feh.
To be sure, a lot of the causes taken up by college students and others looking to do something about these issues are, well, stupid. Vague platitudes and insipid slogans abound in the organized protests against most of the evils Garrett cited (and she cited all the obligatory horrors of capitalism-- wealth gaps between rich and poor, inadequate foreign aid money, obscene drug company profits... This got tendentious enough to actually start pushing me toward sympathizing with the drug companies-- another reason to dislike the talk). And it's equally certain that some of the current problems are almost insurmountable-- stopping the spread of AIDS around the world basically requires getting millions of people to stop doing idiotic things, and if we could do that... well, there'd be no limit to what we could accomplish.
But there's got to be somebody out there with concrete, specific suggestions for things that can be done now to alleviate some of the myriad public health problems Garrett listed off (even unglamorous ideas, like this one). I'd still like an answer to my question-- who should we send money to, and what should we tell our representatives to vote for? If you've got specific suggestions, throw 'em in the comments section. I can't promise to pass them on to energetic and impressionable college students, but I'll at least post links to anything that looks halfway sensible.
And if there's a way to make the world healthier by hitting something with a (low-power) laser, I'm your guy...
Posted at 8:12 AM | link | follow-ups |