The disastrous war on drugs began under Nixon to control two classes of perceived enemies: anti-war protestors and Black citizens.
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government, which has spared no expense and effort to defeat the pandemic, to do the same for social injustice.Īn oft-ignored but fully convincing argument that “we cannot prevent the next pandemic without creating a healthy world.”īuilding on his lysergically drenched book How to Change Your Mind (2018), Pollan looks at three plant-based drugs and the mental effects they can produce. He attacks racism, sexism, and poverty in equal measure, making a plea for compassion toward stigmatized conditions such as obesity and addiction. The author is clearly not just interested in Covid. It also kills more Blacks than Whites, more poor than middle-class people, and more people without health insurance. For those over 60, it kills 6%, for diabetics, over 7%, and those with heart disease, over 10%. Galea begins the bad news by pointing out the misleading statistic that Covid-19 kills less than 1% of those infected that applies to young people in good health. More problematic is that money is a powerful determinant of health those who have it live longer. However, as the author stresses repeatedly, medical progress contributed far less to the current situation than better food, clean water, hygiene, education, and prosperity. Malnutrition, poverty, and child mortality have dropped. Global life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900. We must structure a world “that is resilient to contagions.” He begins by describing the current state of world health, where progress has been spectacular. Better medical care will not stop the next epidemic, he warns. “We invest vast amounts of money in healthcare,” he writes, “but comparatively little in health.” Readers looking to learn how governments (mainly the U.S.) mishandled the pandemic have a flood of books to choose from, but Galea has bigger issues to raise. In this passionate and instructive book, Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, writes that Covid emerged because we have long neglected basic preventative measures. An epidemiologist presents a cogent argument for a fundamental refocusing of resources on “the foundational forces that shape health.” The Covid-19 pandemic is not a one-off catastrophe. “Tolerating extreme conditions such as frozen polar lakes, boiling hot deep-sea vents, and even high doses of radiation, tardigrades have broadened our definition of life on Earth and diversified our search for life-forms on other planets,” they write appreciatively on the way to raising other big questions-e.g., “What preceded the Big Bang?”Ī lively, richly illustrated celebration of scientific inquiry. The authors highlight the tardigrade, a microscopic being that the European Space Agency sent into orbit for 12 days without a bit of harm coming to the tiny crew. As for alien life, Earth has some very interesting critters.
As they proceed, the authors, with assistance from striking photos and illustrations, explain the reasons why our science is applicable everywhere in the universe-at least so far as we know-and consider why we haven’t found concrete evidence of being visited by extraterrestrials. Newton has the advantage, not just of a couple of thousand years of accumulated knowledge, but also because he has the scientific method on his side, “a technique that has led to profound changes in the human condition through the search for objective truths and an understanding of our place in the universe.” Not that the ancients were without their insights: The Greek scholar Eratosthenes was able to suss out the circumference of the spherical Earth through an ingenious application of common knowledge and shrewd calculation. In a characteristically light touch, the authors imagine Aristotle sitting down to a glass of retsina and Isaac Newton quaffing a flagon of mead while arguing about the nature of gravity. Tyson, better known for popularizing and explaining tangled issues of science than for his considerable body of scientific research, and Trefil, a veteran physics professor and author of dozens of science books, peer into “the gulf between the depths of human curiosity and the limits of human ignorance.” That gulf has produced some fiery arguments over the years. Astrophysicists Tyson and Trefil ask the big questions-and “not all have answers.”
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