Thread by @DrLizaMD

So I watched this webinar & have a few thoughts.

Incoming mega🧵 on #Medicine & #ModernAg

Buckle up.

https://twitter.com/careygillam/status/1548043786306985984

At the dawn of the 20th century life expectancy for Americans hovered around 45 years of age.

In other parts of the globe, people lived to the ripe old age of 30.

ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

At the same time ~ 45% of the American population farmed.

According to 1950 census data 1 out of 2 Americans lived on a farm in 1900.

ourworldindata.org/employment-in-…

By the end of the 20th century, the world experienced an unprecedented 30 year increase in life expectancy,

This was in spite of 2 world wars, widespread global unrest & famines that took the lives of >100 million people.

How did this happen?

history.com/news/ukrainian…

Five major advances in #publichealth were key to improving global life expectancy.

1 - Water Sanitation
2 - Vaccination
3 - Antibiotics
4 - Food Security
5 - Vector Control

Water sanitation led to a marked decrease in diarrheal illnesses that directly resulted from fecal contamination of water.

However, 1.7 billion people in the world still don't have access to clean water - putting them at risk of cholera & typhoid.

bit.ly/2FTqqRp

Vaccination led to the eradication of smallpox & nearly eradicated polio.

Measles went from being a common childhood illness with significant morbidity and mortality to a disease that junior doctors hardly recognized by the end of the 20th century.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin & the later development of antibiotics revolutionized the treatment of scarlet fever and other bacterial infections that routinely killed children.

chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-19…

In the 1960s & 1970s, Paul Ehrlich & Dennis Meadows warned the world about the population explosion that would result in mass starvation.

Norman Borlaug, the father of food security, fed 1 billion people & averted that catastrophe.

nytimes.com/2009/09/14/bus…

And last but not least, pesticides eradicated insect-borne illnesses that not only killed people, but also decimated crops & contributed to mass outbreaks of diseases like "St. Anthony's Fire".

grunge.com/322595/st-anth…

These #publichealth advances had such a positive impact on humanity that people forgot what it was like to live in times where cholera, smallpox, sepsis, famine and the plague were commonplace.

People began to live much longer.

They moved from the farms into the cities.

How was it possible for a declining number of farmers to feed population that boomed after WWII?

Because of 5 scientific advances in agriculture.

1 - The invention of the tractor
2 - Improvements in plant breeding
3 - Fertilizer
4 - Crop protection
5 - Genetic engineering

Early tractors were cumbersome, but by the 1920s they were much more efficient.

This reduced the number of acres needed to feed work animals & freed those acres up to increase yield which went directly into the human food supply.

si.edu/stories/five-w…

Plant breeding was revolutionized by brilliant scientists like Nikolai Vavilov who applied principles of genetics to prevent diseases in crops.

He dreamt of ending the famines he witnessed in Russia during his childhood.

In 1908 Fritz Haber discovered how to pull nitrogen out of the air & convert it into ammonia, which plants were then able to use as a nutrient. Carl Bosch figured out how to scale that technology up.

Fertilizer feeds close to 50% of the world's pop.

ourworldindata.org/fertilizers

At the dawn of the 20th century farmers had no way of controlling locusts that would decimate whole harvests in a day & lead to mass famine.

Last year, farmers in East Africa were battling plagues of locusts the size of Manhattan.

bit.ly/3B5blrT

Toxic weeds like Datura (Jimsonweed) can contaminate the food supply causing mass poisonings where patients hallucinate, strip naked & can die of heatstroke.

White snakeroot weed caused milk sickness & killed Abraham Lincoln's mother.

neatorama.com/2016/09/12/Jim…

Weeding was the focus of Cesar Chavez's human rights campaign because of the devastating injuries that working with the short-handled hoe - "el cortito" -caused for migrant workers in California.

nfwm.org/50for50/artwor…

To this day, many farmers are relegated to hand-weeding the jungle, putting them at risk of snakebite.

Per the WHO, snakebite is one of the leading neglected causes of mortality in the world.

Unlike the wussy snakes in the US - the snakes in the tropics can kill quickly.

The widespread use of turning over topsoil to control weeds in the 1930s led to erosion & the inability for soil to hold water.

Torrential storms of dirt blew into towns leading to inhalational injury for the inhabitants of the "Dust Bowl".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

Weeds harbor pathogens carried by insects which transmit diseases to crops.

When fungi infect crops, they make carcinogenic toxins like aflatoxin which causes liver cancer & stunts growth in children.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin

Ergot - another fungal infection of crops harbored in weeds, led to mass poisonings where people had seizures, hallucinations, miscarriages & limb necrosis - their arms & legs would literally fall off.

Ergot is also where LSD comes from.

medicinenet.com/script/main/ar…

This is why #pesticides are critical for #publichealth & #foodsecurity.

Insecticides control bugs like lice, mosquitos, ticks & fleas.

Herbicides control toxic weeds, prevent erosion & occupational injury.

Fungicides prevent exposure to carcinogenic mycotoxins.

All of these pesticides undergo extensive testing & monitoring to make sure that trace exposures will not cause harm.

Glyphosate is a very-low toxicity herbicide which has undergone the most extensive world-wide evaluations.

It does not cause cancer.

bit.ly/3PQH04y

Glyphosate is as critical to agriculture as #vaccines & antibiotics are to medicine.

We have 10,000 yrs of organic farming experience & 50 yrs of food security in the West.

This is a #humanrights issue - people have the right to food & health.