Pandemics are growing – action now is key
Ranu Dhillon 17, instructor at Harvard Medical School and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, March 15, 2017, “The World Is Completely Unprepared for a Global Pandemic”, Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-world-is-completely-unprepared-for-a-global-pandemic, DJL
We fear it is only a matter of time before we face a deadlier and more contagious pathogen, yet the threat of a deadly pandemic remains dangerously overlooked. Pandemics now occur with greater frequency, due to factors such as climate change, urbanization, and international travel. Other factors, such as a weak World Health Organization and potentially massive cuts to funding for U.S. scientific research and foreign aid, including funding for the United Nations, stand to deepen our vulnerability. We also face the specter of novel and mutated pathogens that could spread and kill faster than diseases we have seen before. With the advent of genome-editing technologies, bioterrorists could artificially engineer new plagues, a threat that Ashton Carter, the former U.S. secretary of defense, thinks could rival nuclear weapons in deadliness.