Glimpsing Dr. Pangloss

I'll be going in for hernia surgery in a week or so. No big deal. I'll check into the hospital in the morning and be going home in the afternoon. No long, invasive scar to heal; only a couple tiny incisions which they make to be able to pump air in to create a cavity to work in and a couple other equally small holes for a tiny camera and whatever tools are needed to put in a small mesh over the tear (which is, after all, what a hernia is), and that's it. Like changing spark plugs in an old car.

The advances we have made toward a Panglossian future in human health are, when you come to think of it, nothing short of astonishing. We're not there yet, by a long shot, but take a look at a partial list of diseases which have all but been eradicated in the span of just my own lifetime: polio, small pox, scurvy, scarlet fever, tetanus, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough, cholera, malaria, measles, mumps.

When I was a child, measles, mumps, and whooping cough were just part of growing up, and nearly everyone had at least one at one time or another. The Black Plague was something we read about in books on the middle ages. But polio was a very real and terrifying scourge that swept the nation every summer. Deadly outbreaks of small pox, scarlet fever, typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, and malaria were common, and tens of thousands of people died every year from them. When is the last time you even heard one them referred to in other than the past tense?

It all started with the discovery of vaccines. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention searched historical records dating back to 1900 to compile estimates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths for all the diseases children are routinely vaccinated against today. In nine of the diseases studied, rates of death or hospitalization have declined more than 90 percent, and in the cases of smallpox, diphtheria and polio, by 100 percent.

In only a very few diseases–hepatitis A and B, chickenpox and shingles–did deaths and hospitalizations fall less than 90 percent, and the vaccines for them are all relatively new (the one for chickenpox wasn't adopted nationally until 1995).

Medical procedures and treatments have also made astounding progress. Up through the 1920s and 1930s, a diagnosis of cancer...any form of cancer...was tantamount to a death sentence. (The same was true in the first few years of the AIDS epidemic.) Had I been diagnosed with tongue cancer as little as 25 years earlier than I was, my chances for survival would have been slim to none. A co-worker developed it in the 1970s--the first time I'd ever even heard of tongue cancer--and despite everything medical science could then do for him, he died a horrible death. And even though the treatment I received in 2003 saved my life, treatment methods have been modified to prevent or lessen some of the life-altering side effects I experience. Thanks in part to a study I was entered into, it has been discovered that tongue cancer can be caused not only by tobacco products (smoking or inhaling second-hand) but by the same HPV virus that causes cervical cancer in women. Now, tongue cancer patients are routinely tested for the presence of the HPV virus before setting up a tailored-to-the-cause treatment program.

There are still battles raging against a multitude of diseases and afflictions from cancer to heart disease to ALS and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and AIDS, and we are far from Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds." But slowly, painfully, we are making progress. Looking ahead to how far we have to go can be discouraging in the extreme, but looking back at just how far we've come in a relatively short time should give even the most despairing a small ray of hope.

But what can we as individuals not directly involved in medical research do to speed the process? Admittedly, not much. But next time you see one of those little "donation" canisters sitting on a store counter, take a second to fish out whatever change you have in your pocket or purse and drop it in. You'll never miss it. Just remember that every tsunami is made up of individual drops of water.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.