• Question: Will it ever be possible to cure dieseases and hunger and stuff?

    Asked by ben117 to Anouk, Chris, Judith, Seyyed on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Anouk Gouvras

      Anouk Gouvras answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Hi ben117,

      we can cure lots of diseases and everyday scientists work to find new cures and better ways to treat people. We will probably never be able to cure ALL disease though because new ones will continue to show up. See lots of disease are caused by:
      a) organisms that are also fighting/adapting/evolving to survive so every time we find something to kill these organisms they have to find ways of overcoming this in order to survive (this has been a big problem with diseases such as malaria and bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus)
      and/or b) the fact that our bodies are just not made to live forever, as we get older we are more prone to things going wrong with our bodies. This is just life.

      Also a lot of diseases and hunger as well (which can be a symptom of a disease, like a worm infection, but is not actually a disease), are still around due to the inequalities in the standard of life e.g. there are lots of curable disease in sub-Saharan African populations but the people that live there are just too poor and can not afford a)the treatment and b)the equipment that can stop them getting infected, e.g. pumps to get clean water, bednets so that they don’t get bitten by infected mosquitoes, soap to wash their hands etc. A lot of hunger here is caused by the climate changing and rains failing, people in villages can not afford to go and buy stuff from a supermarket, and the only way they get money is from selling their crops. If the rain doesn’t come and the crops fail they have nothing to sell, so they don’t have any money, so they remain hungry. In Niger they are suffering from a drought (no rain=no crops=no money for food) people, especially children are not getting enough food and many of them are starving, this is the third year the rains have failed.

      Until we can solve these inequalities and help people develop their resources and infrastructure, disease and hunger will always be common.

    • Photo: Judith Sleeman

      Judith Sleeman answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      With infectious diseases, it’s a constant ‘arms race’ to try and find new weapons against the organisms causing the disease as they adapt to make the ones we have useless. Look at antibiotic resistance in bacteria: we use the antibiotics we have so much that the bacteria adapt and become resistant. So we need to develop new drugs, which we’ll probably use too much and round we go again….

      A lot of hunger in the world results from inequality. There is work being done to try and increase the nutritional value of some types of food crops that might help, but that seems like a drop in the ocean when we have people earning multi-million pound salaries on one hand and others unable to afford food and medicine on the other.

    • Photo: Chris Kettle

      Chris Kettle answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      I like the philosophy from Star Trek where the human race gets rid of money and everyone works towards bettering mankind – in this instance hunger, poverty etc was wiped out. Its almost socialist in its ideals but it would work. This is set way in the future where diseases can be cured by tricorderes. I would like to think that this will be possible – but its unlikely in our lifetimes.

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