Nice story but you're overlooking the fact that all the older examples you used are, in other places used as examples of a failure to use science.
Nobody tested the food safety of plastics back then. Nobody tested the efficacy of handwashing, they just relied on "tradition". Frankly, medicine is full of established professionals who have dissed new ideas without actually using the scientific method to test them.
I am glad I didn't die of Polio; lots of my generation did. Whooping Cough, Tetanus, Diptheria.
The problem with all these diseases is that vaccination has been so successful, we barely remember they exist.
The essay cites old examples because the new examples are still developing. We're dying today, just as we were dying yesterday – we just don't know what of yet. Whether it's mercury or microplastics, there is immense hubris in imagining that we, as a civilisation, are ever beyond failure.
Nice story but you're overlooking the fact that all the older examples you used are, in other places used as examples of a failure to use science.
Nobody tested the food safety of plastics back then. Nobody tested the efficacy of handwashing, they just relied on "tradition". Frankly, medicine is full of established professionals who have dissed new ideas without actually using the scientific method to test them.
I am glad I didn't die of Polio; lots of my generation did. Whooping Cough, Tetanus, Diptheria.
The problem with all these diseases is that vaccination has been so successful, we barely remember they exist.
The essay cites old examples because the new examples are still developing. We're dying today, just as we were dying yesterday – we just don't know what of yet. Whether it's mercury or microplastics, there is immense hubris in imagining that we, as a civilisation, are ever beyond failure.