The Most Dangerous Global Health Threats | Larry Brilliant | Big Think

The Most Dangerous Global Health Threats
Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo
Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Larry Brilliant played a key role in eradicating smallpox from the world – so what are the biggest dangers humanity faces now? Brilliant rates politics as on-par with infectious disease.The greatest global threats to health can be divided into two categories, explains epidemiologist and former head of philanthropy at Google, Dr. Larry Brilliant: there is the biological, and the socio-political. In the last 30 years, there have been at least 30 heretofore unknown viruses that have jumped from animals to humans, for worrying reasons Brilliant attributes to modernity and our increase in animal protein consumption. Still, the socio-political threats are the more immediately dangerous. There are centrifugal forces at play that are pushing society to two extreme camps. The domestic and global division caused President Trump’s ‘America First’ mentality and disregard for public health leaves us vulnerable to new viruses that, if they aren’t detected early enough, could be the next pandemic. "Right now because of the re-organization and nationalism… and dislike for the United Nations and its agencies, I think we're in a period of grave vulnerability," says Brilliant. Larry Brilliant is the author of Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History.

Larry Brilliant is the author of Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LARRY BRILLIANT :

Larry Brilliant, MD, MPH, is the author of Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventures of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History. Dr. Larry was Vice President of Google and Executive Director of Google.org. He is board-certified in preventive medicine and public health and co-founder of The Seva Foundation, an international NGO whose programs and grantees have given back sight to more than 3.5 million blind people in over 20 countries. Dr. Larry lived in India for more than a decade working as a United Nations medical officer where he played a key role in the successful World Health Organization (WHO) smallpox eradication program in South Asia. He currently serves as the acting Chairman of the Board of the Skoll Global Threats Fund whose mission is to confront global threats like: pandemics, climate change, water, nuclear proliferation and the Middle East conflict.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT :

Larry Brilliant: If I were asked what are the greatest global threats to health today I would divide that into two parts. One, of course, would be the biology the Ebola, Zika, bird flu, swine flu world and I will talk about that. But far more than that are the kind of centrifugal forces that are pulling us a part as a nation, pulling us apart as a world, the deterioration of all of the international and national organizations that we depend upon to keep us safe. The World Health Organization, which failed to protect the world against Ebola and didn't do a great job on Zika either and it will have a new leader in May of this year. There are a couple of candidates who are terrific and some that aren't so good, but either way WHO is going to be going through a period of years of introspection and re-organization.

We have a new Secretary General of the UN. He's a good guy. He's from Portugal, Gutierrez. He just started. It will be a while before he can find all the bathrooms in the UN buildings. We've just lost the head of CDC. We have a new acting head of CDC, who is also good. But CDC will go through a headless period. And then we have Trump and we have a White House which would almost reflexively discard anything that had the word of public in it and one of those words is public health. And they have not shown a keen interest in pandemics. And the whole idea of America first, which might be good for many things, is singularly not good for a global pandemic. It's an oxymoron. It doesn't work. These centrifugal forces that put us in a period of vulnerability are the gravest threats.
On the biology side, in the last 30 years we've had 30 novel here before unknown diseases that jumped from animals to humans, they're almost all viruses. In addition to Ebola and Zika and bird flu and swine flu we have coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, we have arboviruses and a lot of other viruses that continue to jump at the rate of about one a year.

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/larry-bri...