My consort, the amazing April Smith, is reading Pox: An American History by Michael Willrich, a book about smallpox and the cultural and civil liberties strife involved in the introduction of the smallpox vaccine. (I'd heard an excellent interview on the subject on "Fresh Air" on NPR).
We live in a world where dedicated researchers, public health advocates and workers, and investments in research and deployment have nearly eradicated this deadly, horrific plague.
Some of the early campaigns were in various ways brutal and immoral. But the achievement could have been done ethically, and is truly astonishing -- let alone when put together with what we have achieved with polio, measles, and even heart disease and cancer.
Never in human history have we lived so free of early death, disability, and disease. And we can do more, if we try, for the new diseases of aging which are terrible, but for which we should be grateful to our scientific forebearers for giving us the privilege of living long enough to suffer.
We live in an age of scientific miracles. Our lives are unimaginable, to the minds of all who have gone before.
Never forget.
