Without modern medicine, all four of the past four generations of my mom's family would have either died young, or never even been born. Including me.
I don't know much about my great-grandmother's childhood.
But I do know that when my grandmother was born, in 1934 in rural Eastern Europe, something went very, very wrong. Specifically, I believe, it was uterine rupture during childbirth, where the uterus tears open. Today, the risk of death is approximately between 1% and 6%. Then? It was much, much higher.
Luckily - very luckily - they managed to save both my great-grandmother's and my grandmother's lives. They then told my great-grandmother that she could never, ever get pregnant again, or she and almost certainly the baby would both die.
However, this was the 1930s in rural, extremely Catholic Eastern Europe. Birth control and condoms were not exactly widely available. This is why birth control is healthcare.
And tubal ligations ("tying your tubes") had only been invented 50 years earlier, in Ohio, and had not spread widely to rural Eastern Europe.
So, two years later, however it happened, she became pregnant again. The doctors told her, "If you have this baby, you will not survive, and the chances the baby will survive are incredibly, incredibly small."
This was the 1930s in rural, extremely Catholic Eastern Europe. Abortion is technically possible, but not legal. (Well, as far as I can tell. Regime changes, national borders moving, I don't speak the language, etc. etc.)
Her doctor convinces her, just barely, that she has a husband and a two-year-old daughter that need her. And that the baby almost certainly would not survive, either - she could not give her life to save the child, it would not work.
This is why abortion is healthcare.
As a result of that doctor, my great-grandmother's life is saved. She is excommunicated from the Catholic Church for choosing to save her own life. She gets to raise her daughter, my grandmother.
If my great-grandmother had not survived, there is a significant chance that my grandmother would have died as a teenager, before my mom could ever have been born.
This is because, during the Communist takeover of the country, both of my great-grandparents were arrested and thrown in jail as political prisoners. It is the late 1940s, and the country is just barely out of WWII, during which it was subject to an incredibly violent and bloody Nazi takeover and puppet regime.
My grandmother had no family she could stay with. She was 14 years old, and alone in a boarding house.
My great-grandmother was held for two years (before she forced the regime to let her go in a story of massive badassery), at which point my grandmother is able to go back and live with her. My great-grandfather is held for seven years, before the brutal conditions and hard labor paralyzed his legs (temporarily, thankfully), and he was dumped on the roadside, eventually to be helped home by a series of passersby.
Would my grandmother have survived seven years by herself in a time and region of great political upheaval, most of those years as a teenager? I hope so. But there's no way to know for sure.
My grandmother, thankfully, managed to give birth to my mom and my aunt without any major complications, so far as I know. My mom is the first person in her family to be born in the United States.
Then, when my mom was oh five years old or so, I think, in the 1960s, my grandparents went to a neighborhood barbecue. There, due to an incredibly, incredibly shitty accident, an entire can of propane caught fire and was quite literally dropped on my grandmother's lap.
My grandmother was covered in severe third-degree burns all over her body. She was rushed to the hospital, where none of the doctors expect her to survive.
But, amazingly, amazingly, thanks to modern medicine, she did.
Thanks to burn care and surgical techniques and IV rehydration and antibiotics and high-grade anesthetics - none of which had existed even a hundred years prior - my grandmother survived, and would live for another forty years.
My Mom and My Grandmother
Unbeknownst to almost anyone at the time, the sleepy suburban community my grandparents have moved to was the site of a highly classified, highly experimental nuclear reactor with absolutely horrific safety practices, and the surrounding area is filled with radioactive contamination and cancers to this day.
My grandfather died of liver cancer in the early 1980s.
My grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer in the early 1990s. Thanks to modern medicine, they were able to (a) know what cancer is, (b) detect internal cancers like uterine cancer, and (c) safely perform the hysterectomy that saved my grandmother's life.
My mom was diagnosed with brain cancer in the early 2020s. And thankfully, thankfully, with state-of-the-art modern medicine, they were able to diagnose her cancer early and remove it completely.
We are celebrating one year cancer free for her tonight.
When I was born, I missed my due date by three weeks.
When my due date came around, my parents were waiting and waiting. And nothing happened, for three whole weeks. No water broken, no false contractions, no signs of labor - nothing.
After three weeks, when it was no longer safe to wait, they induced labor in my mom. Which worked to start labor, but not to induce childbirth. 40 hours later, I had still made little if any progress toward being born.
Ultimately, three weeks and forty hours late, I was delivered by C-section.
Cesarean section, or childbirth via abdominal surgery, has been around for at least two thousand years.
But it wasn't until the 1900s that Cesarean sections became something that the mother could also survive.
If it wasn't for modern medicine, my mom would not have survived - and depending on how things ultimately went, I might well not have either.
If my mom had died giving birth to me - one of the most common causes of death for women throughout all of human history, until the past hundred years or so - my sister would never have been born.
When my sister was born, just under three years after I was, she missed her due date by two weeks.
Once again, no sign of childbirth. So once again, they induced labor. And once again, inducing labor did not induce child birth.
This time, my mom was only in labor for 20 hours before they performed the C-section that delivered my sister into this world.
My mom and my sister are both alive and healthy today.
When I was less than a year old, I came down with a 104 degree fever.
Fevers become fatal between 105 and 107 degrees, in humans.
So, my parents took me to the hospital, and the doctors rushed to treat me, with IVs and fever reducers and rehydration therapy and possibly antibiotics (I don't know if it was viral or bacteria) - none of which had existed just 100 years prior.
Thanks to modern medicine:
This, or something like it, is the story of millions and millions of families all around the world.
In a world without modern medicine, far, far more than 50% of the people alive right now would never have been born.
Because survival is cumulative. For every single person saved - by modern medicine, by OSHA requirements, by the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and so much more - not only is their life preserved, but the lives of every single one of their descendants are able to come into being.
What Diseases Will We End Next?
I follow a lot of news for this blog, including medical news. I work in science communication, among other things. I was trained in research methods by a professor who specialized in the history and ethics of science. One of my closest friends has a degree in genetics and a master's in public health from one of the world's leading medical schools.
So, trust me when I say this:
We have regained and in fact exceeded the losses in public health, disease elimination, and vaccination rates caused by the COVID-19 pandemic across almost all ranges, diseases, and sectors. Less than six years after COVID-19 first appeared.
Barring a catastrophe on the scale of WWIII, it is incredibly, incredibly likely that in the next 50 years - if not much sooner - we will be able to say not just smallpox was, but also:
(HIV elimination sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x - there are so many different recent breakthroughs and avenues of hope I couldn't find just one link to summarize them all)
And, with the medical revolution brought about by the development of genetic sequencing, CRISPR, fMRI, MRNA vaccines, electron microscopes, immunology advances, and so much more,
Who knows how much more progress we will some day make?
There's no way to know, yet. And I so, so look forward to when we get to find out
