Cauduceus.

I recently watched a six-part documentary series on PBS called RX For Survival. Not the snappiest name, but it was a very well-made program (narrated by Brad Pitt for those who care, not that I noticed till episode 3 - he does a great job of keeping a very even and rational tone, which is comforting in a documentary; the emotional approach has never worked for me). The first episode was about vaccines and detailed the smallpox eradication program that ended in the 70s with an entire virus wiped from the face of the planet for the first time. Of course other deadly viruses still persist, mostly in the developing world, and more are emerging all the time. The second episode went more into bacteriology and the logistical challenges faced by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and other organizations who are trying to get medicines that exist to people that need them, and it's quite a challenge, nearly impossible in some places for one reason or another (warfare, lack of roads, religious mandates against medications).

I won't detail every episode, but the series as a whole touched on pretty much everything from viruses and bacteria to malnourishment and poor infrastructure, and also explored the reasons medicines lose their effectiveness, why new medicines or vaccines are often so expensive and what is involved in making them, why many drug companies have pulled out of those markets in favor of producing more lucrative pill-a-day products like Viagra and cholesterol meds, and scenarios that are being modeled and pondered by health experts around the globe concerning future epidemics or pandemics, such as the mutated form of H5N1, the avian flu virus, that everyone worries about. HIV/AIDS, polio, pallegra, scurvy, yellow fever, TB, and just about everything else you've heard of is mentioned in some detail as part of the ongoing narrative of how communicable disease and nutritional deficits were studied, understood, and cured. Some brief historical reenactments demonstrate pivotal moments of the story, from Pasteur's postulation of the germ theory of disease, doing away with all the bad airs and humours and other nonsense of the Middle Ages, to Fleming's fortuitous discovery of penicillin.

Modern human stories from Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and even the "developed" world are focused on as well, and we get to know and see the lives of real people with names and faces who suffer from health plagues, as well as aid workers who struggle to help them. The writing is tight and balanced. It's never sentimental or sappy; you never get the feeling you're watching something made by Greenpeace or PETA. Yet it's also not strictly an armchair scientific look at disease - I found myself moved many times by the courage and selflessness of people who faced death or who felt a responsibility to risk their lives for the dying. In hospitals overcrowded and ill-equipped to handle large outbreaks, doctors and nurses worked around the clock to combat even seemingly hopelessly lost causes. Many doctors are volunteers who left lucrative Western practices to try to make an impact on public health in a larger way.

And surprisingly there have been many success stories. I wasn't left feeling gloomy about the future of world health, but rather carefully optimistic that if peace and stability can be brought to regions politically (a big if, always), local people can be empowered to take and distribute their own medications and vaccines, ensure their own sanitary water supplies, and grow and eat the right kinds of food to keep themselves healthy. And the ironic thing is, instead of this causing the population explosion you might expect, it tends to level off growth in these areas to sustainable levels, as family planning becomes part of health education and families don't feel the need to have so many children in the risk (or certainty) that most will die. All in all, I highly recommend watching this series if you get the chance. It has made me rethink my own role in the world and my (relative) comfort in the face of so much poverty and disease. But I no longer think of it as this depressing, seething wall against which individuals have no power. Nor do I see pharmaceutical companies as the root of all evil - they have a role to play like everyone else in the story, for good and for bad.

I've seen the story of a non-wealthy couple from the USA making "ambulance sidecars" for motorcycles to reach a series of African villages that otherwise would be a half-day's walk from the nearest doctor. I've seen the story of the two doctors who gave simple vitamin A drops to millions of children in Indonesia and Tibet and watched "nightblindness" disappear almost literally overnight. I've seen the story of the American-educated Botswanan doctor who returned to his native country to set up an AIDS eradication program, which is now the model upon which 70 other countries around the world are basing their own programs. There is so much that can be done to give people better lives, and not all of it is rocket science or science fiction. Some of it is just willingness or hard work. And there's hope - there doesn't have to be an endless cycle of poverty and disease, though if you watch CNN to form your world views that's the conclusion you'll undoubtedly reach as you sink further into your sofa. The problems of the world won't go away any time soon, but they will never go away if people, especially in the affluent areas of the world, don't do anything to help.