The Mirage of Health (Biology TODAY‪)‬

I am writing this column in late August, so it's difficult to predict what the H1N1 flu situation will be by like the time it is published towards the end of the year. Since there is already a pandemic, the spread of the virus will likely have picked up more steam by that time, but how much steam it is difficult to forecast So I'm not even going to try. Instead, I will make a prognostication that is a safer bet: there will continue to be health issues of some kind at the end of this year, at the end of this century, and on to the end of this millennium. I am using as my crystal ball a book by Rene Dubos (1901-1982) called Mirage of Health (1959). It seems appropriate to examine this book on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, because it is at least as relevant today as it was at the time it came out. Also, since this issue of ABT is devoted to health and medicine, this work is a great reminder of the limits of the latter to ensure the former. The book's main argument is that, as the title suggests, the quest for perfect health is an unending one, just as walking towards a mirage is a fruitless task. Dubos contends that the idea that better days are coming, that if we get rid of the latest scourge to health, life will be wonderful and we will to a ripe old age in good health, just isn't going to happen. In other words, finding the "cure" for cancer or HIV infections or ... isn't going to make life wonderful. He cites as support for his view the fact that finding a cure for tuberculosis (TB), the scourge of the 19th century, did not lead to a health utopia. In fact, thanks to life style changes rather than medical advances, the incidence of TB had already decreased significantly even before an antibiotic treatment for this bacterial infection became available in the 1950s.