Podcast: Sam Harris - The Plague Years (with Matt McCarthy)

[James Morris-Lent]

Recent podcast on the subject of drug-resistant infections. 1 Hour. I recommend it if you have the juice for it.

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Matt McCarthy about his book Superbugs: The Race to Stop an Epidemic. They discuss the problem of drug resistant bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses, and the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to keep pace with evolution.

 

[Mithriel]

I studied microbiology at university in 1972 and it was obvious that antibiotics were only a short term solution because of resistance but they worked so well (along with vaccination) that people forgot how bad infections could be so there was no sense of urgency.

People were already forgetting this was about the time when the notion that all disease could be overcome by the right attitude began to be bandied about,

We see that with our experience. All diseases are now seen to have an "emotional" component with the implication that there is a choice of how serious we let them be, whereas infections were once seen as the commonest cause and something that came upon people out of the blue.