Eradication Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Eradication

Einleitung anhören

00:00

Zusammenfassung von Eradication

Name: Eradication
Author: Nancy Leys Stepan

Nancy Leys Stepan

Ridding the World of Diseases Forever

16 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

'Eradication' by Nancy Leys Stepan is a historical account of public health campaigns targeting diseases like smallpox and yellow fever. It highlights the socio-political implications of such campaigns and raises important ethical questions.

Themen

Erkrankungen Pandemie

Inhaltsübersicht

Eradication
in 7 Kernaussagen verstehen

Audio & Text in der Blinkist App

Kernaussage 1 von 7

What’s in it for me? Join the struggle against disease.

Less than a century ago, people were dropping like flies from diseases most of us never have to worry about, or that don’t even exist anymore.

The advent of vaccines in the eighteenth century was one of the greatest triumphs of public health. And today, armed with an ever-increasing knowledge of the way diseases work and spread, we have the possibility of totally eradicating many of them. But should we?

It may sound counterintuitive, but many people are actually against the concept of total eradication. Not because they want people to die from diseases, but because the cost of these projects outweigh their benefits and take money away from other more important projects. So what should we do instead?

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why the concept of eradication is so radical;
why you need to send out an army to kill mosquitoes; and
why people booed when Bill and Melinda Gates announced they wanted to eradicate malaria.

The eradication of disease is now theoretically possible, but it raises many questions.

It would be a good thing if we eradicated all diseases, right? Thanks to scientific advancements, we’re getting closer to being able to do that every day.

The eradication of disease has been a possibility since the nineteenth century, when scientists first realized what causes them. Robert Koch, for instance, discovered in 1882 that tuberculosis was caused by bacteria called tubercle bacillus. Scientists came to understand that tiny organisms like bacteria, viruses and parasites were responsible for disease.

The scientific community also realized that disease-causing organisms were often spread by insects, such as mosquitoes. At the end of the nineteenth century, Ronald Ross and Giovanni Batista Grassi found that malaria was carried by female mosquitoes of the anopheline genus.

Once they uncovered a disease’s origin, scientists were able to work on preventing it by developing new technologies like vaccines. Eradication was suddenly a possibility!

And if scientists were able to eradicate a disease, they should have, right?

After WWII, when scientists undertook eradication campaigns against smallpox and malaria, we learned the answer was more complicated than we thought. Few would argue against the elimination of those diseases, but some questioned the integrity of eradication as a philosophical concept.

Eradication raises a number of questions such as: How do we choose which diseases to eradicate? How do we allocate eradication funding? These questions are biological, political and logistical all at once, so there are plenty of places where mistakes could be made.

Consider malaria. We’ve undertaken huge eradication campaigns against malaria but, according to the World Health Organization, it still affects 250 million people per year. Has this been a waste of resources? Would funds be better spent elsewhere?

Disease eradication is historically and politically rooted in imperialism.

The United States began gaining imperial power at the end of the nineteenth century, with its intervention in Cuba and the Philippines. Although this made the country more powerful, it also created new problems, such as an increase in cases of yellow fever.

Yellow fever was widespread in Cuba, prompting the United States to make its first attempt at eradicating a disease to improve the public health. In 1900, US physicians in Havana found that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, so the army undertook a campaign to wipe them out.

The Rockefeller Foundation was one of the earliest proponents of disease eradication.

Have you ever heard of the Rockefeller Foundation? Even if you haven’t, you might have benefited from its work.

The Rockefeller Foundation was founded in 1913 on the belief that diseases were the source of all societal ills such as poverty and crime. Fighting disease was thus seen as a prerequisite for building an advanced society.

After WWII, eradication became a key component of international public health.

The Rockefeller Foundation faced a lot of challenges with eradication but the idea still lived on in the global health community.

After WWII, the newly founded World Health Organization (WHO) carried on the dream of eradication, with the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) serving as its first regional office.

Many major eradication campaigns have failed, such as the campaign against malaria.

Malaria has long been one of the most widely feared diseases in the world. After observing the high death toll from malaria in WWII, the WHO decided to take measures to eradicate it once and for all.

This proved to be a big challenge. When the war ended, people were filled with optimism for the future and had a deep faith in science. They believed that DDT might be a simple answer to the widespread, deadly malaria problem: DDT could take out the insects and people would be saved.

The eradication of smallpox proved that eradication was possible – but complicated.

If you were born after 1977, chances are good you’ve never even heard of smallpox. How come?

Smallpox is the only disease in history to ever have been successfully eradicated. The eradication of smallpox started as early as 1796 when the smallpox vaccine was developed: the first vaccine ever created.

Eradication techniques have changed over time but the concept is here to stay.

Since the late 1970s, one idea has dominated the concept of global health: primary health care, the belief that everyone should have access to basic medical treatment.

There’s debate as to whether or not eradication should be considered a part of primary health care. Some say it’s inefficient to channel so much effort into certain diseases and it would be better to focus on larger issues, like sanitation or general health care.

Du möchtest die gesamte Zusammenfassung von Eradication sehen?

Kernaussagen in Eradication

Mehr Wissen in weniger Zeit

Sachbücher auf den Punkt gebracht

Kernaussagen aus Sachbüchern in ca. 15 Minuten pro Titel lesen & anhören mit den „Blinks”

Zeitsparende Empfehlungen

Titel, die dein Leben bereichern, passend zu deinen Interessen und Zielen

Podcasts in Kurzform ^Neu

Kernaussagen wichtiger Podcasts im Kurzformat mit den neuen „Shortcasts”

Worum geht es in Eradication?

Eradication (2011) is about the health community’s attempts to eradicate certain diseases from the face of the planet. These blinks trace the history of disease eradication, its successes and failures, and the complicated political issues it raises.

Bestes Zitat aus Eradication

The word eradication derives from Latin and means to tear out by the roots.

—Nancy Leys Stepan

Wer Eradication lesen sollte

Students of medicine or public health
Anyone interested in the eradication of disease

Über den Autor

Nancy Leys Stepan is a professor of public health history at Columbia University. She focuses on eugenics and Latin America.

Kategorien mit Eradication

Gesundheit & Ernährung

Ähnliche Zusammenfassungen wie Eradication

Super Human

Dave Asprey

The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever

24 min

4.1

The Patient Will See You Now

Eric Topol

The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands

15 min

4.1

Superforecasting

Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner

The Art and Science of Prediction

A New History of the World

28 min

4.6

When They Win, You Win

Russ Laraway

Being a Great Manager Is Simpler Than You Think

Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs

Discover the Shocking Truth with This New York Times Bestseller

Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire

Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

18 min

3.5

No One Cares About Crazy People

Ron Powers

The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America

13 min

4.4

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

The fascinating story behind the Mongol Empire

16 min

4.3

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Marie Kondo

The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, and Advice for Living Your Best Life

The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic

An explanation of Jung's theories about archetypes and the unconscious

27 min

4.5

The Twenty-four Hour Mind

Rosalind D. Cartwright

The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in our Emotional Lives

11 min

3.9

How to Talk to Anyone

Leil Lowndes

92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

How Health Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

19 min

4.4

The Great Mental Models

Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien

General Thinking Concepts

26 min

4.5

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

From the Big Bang to Black Holes

A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time

The New Science of How and Why We Dream

Why Your 20s Matter – and How to Make the Most of Them Now

A Memoir of (My) Body

12 min

4.2

Algorithms to Live By

Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths

The Computer Science of Human Decisions

22 min

3.9

The Emotional Lives of Teenagers

Lisa Damour

Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents

Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls

17 min

4.3

A General Theory of Love

Thomas Lewis

The science behind falling in love

The Empowered Woman's Guide to Pleasuring a Man

Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time

14 min

4.2

Bedtime Biography: Napoleon The Great

Andrew Roberts

How Napoleon Conquered Europe and Changed the World

39 min

4.7

Blueprint

Nicholas A. Christakis

The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

23 min

4.4

A Biography of Loneliness

Fay Bound Alberti

The History of an Emotion

The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself

An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

14 min

3.5

Intuitive Eating

Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach

A Radical New Way to Make a Difference

A Sociological Explanation

How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future?

Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life

32 min

4.5

Lives of the Stoics

Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Ignite Your Power, Your Purpose, and Your Why

15 min

4.3

Don’t Trust Your Gut

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life

Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond

23 min

4.2

100 Million Years Of Food

Stephen Le

What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today

17 min

4.0

How Luck Happens

Janice Kaplan and Barnaby Marsh

Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love and Life

17 min

4.3

❤️ für Blinkist️️️

Ines S.

Ich bin begeistert. Ich liebe Bücher aber durch zwei kleine Kinder komme ich einfach nicht zum Lesen. Und ja, viele Bücher haben viel bla bla und die Quintessenz ist eigentlich ein Bruchteil.

Genau dafür ist Blinkist total genial! Es wird auf das Wesentliche reduziert, die Blinks sind gut verständlich, gut zusammengefasst und auch hörbar! Das ist super. 80 Euro für ein ganzes Jahr klingt viel, aber dafür unbegrenzt Zugriff auf 3000 Bücher. Und dieses Wissen und die Zeitersparnis ist unbezahlbar.

Ekaterina S.

Extrem empfehlenswert. Statt sinnlos im Facebook zu scrollen höre ich jetzt täglich zwischen 3-4 "Bücher". Bei manchen wird schnelle klar, dass der Kauf unnötig ist, da schon das wichtigste zusammen gefasst wurde..bei anderen macht es Lust doch das Buch selbständig zu lesen. Wirklich toll

Nils S.

Einer der besten, bequemsten und sinnvollsten Apps die auf ein Handy gehören. Jeden morgen 15-20 Minuten für die eigene Weiterbildung/Entwicklung oder Wissen.

Julia P.

Viele tolle Bücher, auf deren Kernaussagen reduziert- präzise und ansprechend zusammengefasst. Endlich habe ich das Gefühl, Zeit für Bücher zu finden, für die ich sonst keine Zeit habe.