Contemporary Plagues and Social Progress

¹ Harvard School of Public Health, Boston

For this address at the opening session of the First Mexican National Congress of Infectious Diseases in Children (ler, Congreso National de Infectologia Pediatrica), I have chosen as my title "Contemporary Plagues and Social Progress." While in medicine the term plague usually refers to diseases caused by Pasteurella pestis, the word has broader meanings and usages. It describes that which smites or troubles, can refer to an afflictive evil or anything troublesome or vexatious, or can be applied to any malignant disease, especially those that are contagious. It can be used as an expression of annoyance, as a mild oath, or with the implication of harassment. Thus, today we are concerned with the plague of plagues, the afflictive evils of the cumulative insults of infectious disease. Additionally, we might be tempted to cast a plague on the system of medical education and on the political process that neither conveys the continuing importance of infectious diseases nor funds the mechanisms for their containment. Or, should the shoe be on the other foot? Should not society cast a plague on us?

As experts in the field of infectious disease, have we not failed to publicize that, on a global basis, the combination of diarrheal disease and malnutrition is the leading cause of death in infants and children? Has not our successful use of antibiotics induced unjustified public complacency regarding the problems of infectious disease? Why have our low-keyed reports of resistant typhoid bacilli, or pneumococci or of gonococci failed to dispel the prevalent mystique that science has controlled infectious agents, leaving cancer and heart disease in the public eye as the major unconquered problems in the health field?