Steven Berlin Johnson

The author reviews the key factors which drove up life expectancy and how they came to be. The story is a perfect “science” communication piece because the author takes apart these factors into what it really rakes for knowledge to become life saving practice.

There are many important things to note:
- how culturally we celebrate wars so much more than health innovation which saves lives
- how we believe that private sector delivers results in health innovation when it is mostly been able to deliver distribution
- how health innovation is so much more complicated than the science alone because how it translates to policy makes all the difference
- how dogma even in the science community can make it hard to deliver health

Basically the vision of how science impacts health in the public is so different from what actually happened and how technology impacted life expectancy. Pretty much everyone should be aware of this history, particularly in a pandemic.

Good health needs passionate evidence based drivers, and a practical public policy translation…… (more)

This book connects inventions with social movements in a way that formed many moments of epiphany for me. It was delightful and thought-provoking, but it's not a gripping book; I had to force myself back into it a few times because the excitement wasn't quite there (and I was reading Six Of Crows at the time), but every time I went back in I was glad I did.

It may give you a sense that, sometimes, the world really does make sense, and it will make history seem just a little bit smaller and more closely intertwined.… (more)