By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
Saw an interesting fact the other day that I am passing on in this column to Robert. F. Kennedy, Jr. and those conservative Republicans who see science as an evil.
Do you realize that in 1900 the average world life expectancy was 32 years of age? Nineteen hundred. My grandmother was 11 in 1900. It was not that long ago.
And that 32-year life expectancy was almost exactly the same as it was during the cave man era. Over thousands of years the human race had not gained a single year.
You know what the world life expectancy was 100 years later, in 2000? Seventy-two years. You know what the life expectancy in the United States is today? Just over 78 years (81 years for women).
In other words, a child born today has the prospect of living more than twice as long as a child born in 1900 — or even 10,000 years ago.
What’s the difference? Science and modern medicine. Scientific experimentation in the past 125 years has led to the understanding of viruses and bacteria and the development of vaccines that prevent the childhood diseases that were primarily responsible for keeping the life expectancy low.
Before the Civil War almost one out of every two children died before the age of six and this trend continued on a limited scale through World War II.
When I was a child the woman that lived on the hill across the road from us had given birth to 16 children. Eight had died by age five. This was in the middle 1950s, before children were vaccinated against multiple diseases.
Science has also made significant advances in sanitation practices and methods of making childbirth, which led to the death of many mothers and babies, much safer. Science is the difference.
Today many of us attempt to live longer by eating all the right foods. No pesticides. Only organic. Before 1900 everything was organic. There were no pesticides, and no slaughter animals were fed antibiotics. There were no preservatives in meat or other foods. Everything people ate was organic. And the life expectancy was 32 years. Does this tell you something?
The single biggest advance in the past 100 years has been the development of vaccines, antibiotics and anti-viral medicines that get our children through the early years. Vaccines have eradicated many diseases and antibiotic have saved the lives on untold millions of children who may have perished from pneumonia. And it is all due to science.
Several of my friends and relatives had polio growing up. Some people lived much of their lives in an iron lung. Now vaccines prevent that crippling disease.
Vaccinations became mandatory in the 1960s and many childhood diseases that had ravaged society for thousands of years were eradicated in a matter of decades. Vaccines were developed by a scientific community determined to save humanity.
Now that same scientific community is under fire by anti-vaccine activist Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and a host of conservative Republicans. They would seek to undo what 150 years of medical research and development has accomplished.
The state of Florida recently dropped the mandate that all school children should be vaccinated. Parents are now allowed to make the choice, which undoubtedly will lead to many unvaccinated children and the return of childhood diseases.
Yes, Kennedy and the Trump Administration are asking us to go back in time, to abandon the medical advances that helped advance the average life expectance from 32 years to 78 years.
Why? Can they be that ignorant?
Science, especially medical science, is our friend, not our enemy, yet the Trump Administration has cut back or even eliminated funding for medical research at some colleges and universities.
We are moving back into the dark ages with the leaders of our country viewing science as a kind of witchcraft.
And that is not good.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”