AS WITH WAR AND FAMINE, the severity and frequency with which pestilence (plagues) are now striking is alarming.

Less than 20 years ago the medical profession claimed victory over a wide array of bacterial and viral killers. In 1979, U.S. Surgeon General William Stewart declared that it was time to "close the books on infectious diseases."[14] 

As recently as 1983, a medical textbook declared infectious diseases "more easily prevented and more easily cured" than any other major group of disorders.[15] 

But instead of fading, the cases of infectious diseases have skyrocketed throughout the ’90s. Dr. Sherwin Nuland, in his best-selling book, How We Die [16], laments, "Medicine’s purported triumph over infectious disease has become an illusion."[17] 

Doctors now warn that the current resurgence of drug-resistant bacteria strains could prove to be more deadly than AIDS. AP reports:

The emergence of bacteria strains that cannot be killed by the current arsenal of antibiotics could become a public health threat worse than AIDS, experts warn.

Diseases considered conquered — tuberculosis, pneumonia, meningitis, staph infections — are becoming unstoppable. Common bacteria that cause everything from toddlers’ ear infections to pneumonia could become "supergerms" resistant to vancomycin and other drugs.

Scientists expect "nothing short of a medical disaster," Dr. Alexander Tomasz of Rockefeller University in New York City warned at the 1994 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[18] 

© Copyright, The Family 1998-2000