Even if somebody is not fighting religion, it is still possible for them to be doing some good in the world.
Okay, nobody actually thinks that fighting religion is the only way to do good. Yet, I fear that my focus is sometimes too narrow, and it is time to broaden one's perspective to include other concerns.
I recently watched a video on TED. This one is having to do with stopping the next pandemic - how a private organization investing $100,000 did more to stop the last pandemic than the World Health Organization.
Larry Brilliant Wants to Stop Pandemics
It explains what steps can be taken to help stop the next pandemic.
Early detection, early response.
Brilliant didn't mention anything about prayer, particularly prayer in public schools, as being an effective counter-measure. One thing he said that was not so brilliant, that in wiping out life-threatening small pox, that "God rewarded the physicians for all their hard work," in wiping out the disease.
God had nothing to do with it. The physicians with all their hard work deserve all the credit. But I would not exchange a world without this disease for a world that that lacked a few absurd religious sentiments.
One disease gone. Another (polio) just about gone.
That's good work.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Fighting the Next Pandemic
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Samuel Skinner
I think we had some new outbreaks of polio. We don't have these diseases in the states anymore so we don't get how big a deal it was. This week I was walking to class and I passed a guy who was walking funny. His legs didn't work. I talked with him (we were going to the same class) and it turned out he was from Vietnam and had been afflicted with polio.
Post a Comment