How Did We Get Here?
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Man has battled disease for as long as there has been civilization. Soon after Creation, human beings encountered microbes that infected their drinking water, food and environment.
As men built cities and began to live in more confined spaces, the risk of outbreaks increased. One of the earliest-known diseases was tuberculosis. Spread from person to person through the air, tuberculosis was even found in ancient Egypt.
As trade between nations increased, diseases often proliferated along commercial routes. The impact on those who had not previously known such diseases was disastrous. Illnesses such as influenza and the bubonic plague, which spread from Asia to Europe, were two such examples, as was cholera, an intestinal disease believed to have originated in India. After cholera’s inception, millions died, and the disease went on to spread across the Middle East, Europe, China, North Africa and Japan. Eventually, it even reached as far as England and the United States.
During the Age of Exploration in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, advances in shipbuilding and navigation made it possible for explorers to visit foreign lands and develop new territories. This also contributed to the spread of various diseases. One of the most deadly of these was smallpox, which killed perhaps as many as 5 million people worldwide from AD 165 to 180 in the Antonine Plague, with as many as 5,000 per day purportedly dying in Rome alone.
When Europeans arrived in the New World in the fifteenth century, they unwittingly brought smallpox with them. This and other diseases wiped out up to 90 to 95 percent of the indigenous native population.
Despite the development of vaccines, smallpox killed between 300 and 500 million people during the twentieth century alone. Consider. Far more were killed by just this disease than by the gun!
Another of the oldest-known diseases still taking a tremendous toll today is malaria. Carried by mosquitoes, malaria was mentioned in ancient Chinese and Egyptian writings as far back as 4,000 years ago, with the Greeks also describing its devastating effects. Malaria is also thought to have been a factor in the fall of the Roman Empire.
But God never intended for man to live this way, stating in III John 2, “I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.” Recall that, after creating Adam and Eve, He said that all of His Creation was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). This leaves no room for God having placed hidden, inactive viruses and bacteria within their bodies, waiting for the right moment to afflict them with horrible sickness and disease of every kind. Man did this to himself—inviting disease as the natural consequence of broken laws.
All man’s efforts to cure diabetes, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, blindness, deafness, Alzheimer’s (and other diseases of the mind), strokes, AIDS, and a host of infant and childhood diseases have failed. Add to this the ongoing quest for new wonder drugs, treatments, specialized diagnoses, surgeries and procedures, breakthroughs in technology—and every other kind of medical advancement thus far. Again, all efforts have ultimately failed!
A Present Crisis
Hardly a week goes by without reports of another disease outbreak somewhere in the world. News headlines such as the following are commonplace: “Rift Valley Fever Hits South Africa,” “New Strains of Lyme Disease Bacteria Identified, Study Claims,” “AIDS Remains the World’s Worst Epidemic,” “Dengue Fever Surges in the Americas.”
Officials worldwide are now reporting the resurgence of dengue fever. Once a rare disease, it is spreading around the world at an alarming rate. So much so that it has become a major international public health concern. In fact, dengue is a leading cause of hospitalization and death of children in many countries.
The potential for disaster is immense, with 2.5 billion people living in areas where this virus has been transmitted. In fact, an additional 50 to 100 million are already known to be infected by dengue every year. Although it is not yet the fatal hemorrhagic strain, once the disease enters the pandemic level—and there is every indication this could happen—there is greatly increased potential for it to mutate in this direction.
It is now even affecting the U.S., which has never seen such a surge. In the past, dengue had always remained outside American borders. But in the last few years, it has slowly been migrating north, and is now found across Central America and some American border states. According to health authorities, dengue cases in the Americas have increased almost fivefold over the past 30 years, skyrocketing from 2.7 million cases in the 1990s to 4.8 million between the years 2000 and 2007.
This has alarmed authorities on the Texas border, who have also seen a higher number of cases, as has Florida. Puerto Rico also has been suffering, and has now declared a dengue fever epidemic.
Dengue fever is just one of dozens of diseases that health authorities report are increasing! These and other rapidly spreading illnesses paint a grisly picture! Even more dangerous diseases lurk in the shadows. Yet, with dwindling numbers of doctors and nurses entering the medical profession, there is even greater heightened alarm about the nation’s ability to combat them.
The Wall Street Journal reported, “Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the [universal healthcare] law. At current graduation and training rates, the [U.S.] could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.”
Compounding the problem, widespread wars have resulted in influxes of thousands into refugees camps, most of which feature conditions that can only be described as absolute squalor—fertile breeding grounds for disease.
Then there are the polluted overcrowded cities, which often result in contaminated water—which is drunk by most residents. The United Nations estimates that more than half of all hospitalizations are as a result of people not having access to clean water.
Children are among those most affected. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, of the estimated 6.8 billion people on Earth, 2.6 billion—almost 40 percent—“live without access to even a toilet at home and thus are vulnerable to a range of health risks.” This lack of access to proper sanitation, including clean water, “is a major cause of diarrhoea, the second biggest killer of children in developing countries, and leads to other major diseases such as cholera, schistosomiasis, and trachoma.”
Add to this rampant immorality, which has caused an explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, with a host of devastating effects.
As an example of an unprecedented catastrophe still unfolding as of this writing, monsoon rains left 20 percent of Pakistan underwater in the summer of 2010—an area larger than the entire nation of England. Some areas by then had already received 180 percent of the normal precipitation for the whole season. Twenty million Pakistanis have lost their homes, with 3.5 million children at severe risk of infection by cholera and other rapidly spreading diseases. Millions face starvation.
Aside from the flooding, the situation is worsened by a slow dispatch of international aid, due to the global economic downturn and the way the crisis has intensified gradually, rather than arriving in a single dramatic event such as an earthquake or a tsunami. Add to this an already fragile government being further destabilized, with opportunistic terrorist groups, as well as the Pakistani military, taking advantage of the situation and compounding the mayhem.
How Soon?
So obviously this world is in serious trouble. Mankind is teetering on the edge of global disease catastrophe!
Although skeptics say that great global pandemics could not happen again because of improved hygiene and sterilization, this is wishful thinking. Some bacteria have become resistant to antibacterial soaps, and now need stronger and stronger chemicals to kill them. Then there are others that scientists are not able to conquer at all.
Because of this and other factors, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts report that the threat from infectious diseases is increasing: “Infectious disease clearly represents a threat to human security in that it has the potential to affect both the person and his or her ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness,” a Rand Corporation study stated. It added, “In addition to threatening the health of an individual, the spread of disease can weaken public confidence in government’s ability to respond, have an adverse economic impact, undermine a state’s social order, catalyze regional instability, and pose a strategic threat through bioterrorism and/or bio warfare.”
This prominent research company went on to outline the enormity of the problem facing the world. Consider this: “...The magnitude and nature of the threat is growing because of the emergence of new illnesses such as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Ebola, and hepatitis C; the increasing inability of modern medicine to respond to resistant and emerging pathogens; and the growing threat of bioterrorism and bio warfare. In addition, human actions amplify these trends by putting us in ever-greater contact with deadly microbes. Globalization, modern medical practices, urbanization, climatic change, and changing social and behavioral patterns all serve to increase the chance that individuals will come in contact with diseases, which they may not be able to survive.
“The AIDS crisis in South Africa provides a disturbing example of how a pathogen can affect security at all levels, from individual to regional and even to global. Approximately one-quarter of the adult population in South Africa is Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) positive, with the disproportionate burden of illness traditionally falling on the most economically and personally productive segment of society. The true impact of the AIDS epidemic is yet to be felt. Deaths from full-blown AIDS are not projected to peak until the period between 2009 and 2012, and the number of HIV infections is still increasing.”
Significantly worsening pestilence—disease epidemics—are yet another confirmation that the “end of the age” is upon us.