<
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/05/16/Inconvenient-Truth-Air-Borne-Disease-Carl-Zimmer/>
"Science writer Carl Zimmer’s latest book is a brilliant history of medicine
that takes us from Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of the 19th century to present
day. Along the way, it offers an anthropological study of medical culture — a
culture capable of ignoring science when it wants to. That culture cost the
lives of millions early in the pandemic, and here in British Columbia that
culture remains strong. Zimmer’s book demonstrates that even when we understand
the science of disease, governments often reject science on purely political
grounds.
When Pasteur demonstrated the germ theory of disease in the late 19th century,
it was a dramatic leap forward for medicine.
It was also a dramatic defeat for two competing theories of illness. One was
the centuries-old belief that diseases arose in “miasmas,” or poisoned air that
somehow infected and killed some people while leaving others unharmed. The
other theory, promoted by Pasteur’s contemporary Rudolf Virchow, argued that
poverty and ignorance (what we now call the social determinants of health)
promoted disease.
Miasmas were consigned to history. Virchow’s social determinants were ignored
because acting on them would require a social revolution.
The consequences of Pasteur’s triumph have reverberated since then, all the way
to the hospitals and classrooms of British Columbia — not always in a good
way."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: May 22, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-may-22-129582799
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
