The Global Immune System
Not everything is working well in the current response to Swine Flu -for example its unclear how safe the vaccine will be, its distribution will be chaotic and the flu virus may yet mutate so much that it renders the vaccine useless.
Nevertheless I believe that the response to a possible pandemic will find its way into medicine history books as one of the great advances in medicine, listed alongside such glorious achievements as the first open heart surgery or the first kidney transplant. Why? Because it is the first time that humankind's global immune system - that giant network of doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical factories spanning the globe - could actually be fast enough to beat an novel infection before it really infects the globe. If we manage to vaccinate enough people that may actually stop Swine Flu; this new virus with the potential to infect billions of people may just disappear again without ever having infected more than a couple million.
That would be a splendid achievement indeed - and a rare bit of good news in a time of drug pipelines drying up, antibiotics loosing effectiveness and air-travel speeding up the spread of infectious diseases.
Nevertheless I believe that the response to a possible pandemic will find its way into medicine history books as one of the great advances in medicine, listed alongside such glorious achievements as the first open heart surgery or the first kidney transplant. Why? Because it is the first time that humankind's global immune system - that giant network of doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical factories spanning the globe - could actually be fast enough to beat an novel infection before it really infects the globe. If we manage to vaccinate enough people that may actually stop Swine Flu; this new virus with the potential to infect billions of people may just disappear again without ever having infected more than a couple million.
That would be a splendid achievement indeed - and a rare bit of good news in a time of drug pipelines drying up, antibiotics loosing effectiveness and air-travel speeding up the spread of infectious diseases.
