Health

Right now, biological evolution is not the main engine of change in the human condition. Instead, social and technological development, which occur on shorter timescales, are the predominant change-makers. In particular, it seems that we are gaining capabilities to directly modify human nature—through genetic selection, gene therapy, cognitive enhancement drugs, life extension treatments.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

A single super large combo meal at any popular hamburger outlet will contain a full day's worth of calorie intake. When one sees such meals being purchased and eaten, one wonders whether the individual concerned is going to consume only water for the next 24 hours.

Unknown.

We are in the midst of a pandemic of eating too much (the overweight and obesity pandemic) and a pandemic of not having enough to eat (the under nutrition and hunger pandemic). Roughly 1.6 billion people in the world are affected by the first pandemic and roughly 1 billion people in the world today are affected by the second pandemic.

Unknown.

Roughly speaking, a child born today in a very poor country can expect to live about 40 years, while a child born today in a wealthy country could expect to live about 80 years.

Unknown.

We are scientifically naked in front of this threat. We do not have the diagnostics to quickly detect an MDR or XDR case. Once detected, we do not have the drugs to effectively treat the patient at reasonable cost, and we do not have a TB vaccine.

Unknown.

HIV/AIDS is the greatest pandemic in human history. It is chronic pandemic, in the sense that its rise and fall is measured in decades. The known part of this pandemic is now three decades old, and it has several decades still to run.

Unknown.

The evidence is that 50% of young heroin users who are under 19 will die by the age of 50. It's a terrible danger. People with alcohol problems have got a full 400% increase in expectation of death, than people without alcohol problems.

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

What's special about it as a science subject is that it is so awkward, it doesn't lend itself to easy solutions. It's a multi-factorial problem, very different to- for example- the question of what causes influenza?

Pioneering addiction medicine researcher and founder of addiction studies field

HIV prevalence among injecting drug users ranges from 20-40% in some countries, and more than 40% in many others. If we estimate the number of injecting drug users worldwide as 60 million, it means that around 3 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS because of this dangerous mode of transmission.

Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Speaking about the demand side… we have skills and techniques in drug prevention and thousands of advisors have been trained by our programmes around the world to work in the community at school level, especially with children. Children are the most vulnerable group, and we must do our utmost to protect them.

Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The scale and scope of this threat is extraordinary. It amounts to US$320 billion per annum or, to put it another way, half a percent of global GDP. That is just the economic cost of drug trafficking. As far as the social and health risks are concerned, we believe that around 250,000 people each and every year die because of drugs.

Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Many of our health problems challenges cannot be solved within one specific border. In the old days, we had 'tropical medicine' which was a colonial approach. This led to international-health during the cold-wars which simply meant the health of those far away. Now we have the concept of 'global health' which reflects the globalisation of the world.

Co-discoverer of Ebola virus & Global Health Leader

Public health goes everywhere. Winslow defined it as 'the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organised efforts of society'. I think that's a good start, but we have to see the culture and ecosystem of public health in the context of the community. Not only is happiness important to public health, but so is GDP and the environment. It's an immensely broad subject.

UK's Chief Medical Officer & Leading Public Health Advocate

The essence of public health as a field of action is that it tries to stop problems from happening where possible, and prepares societies for problems that are unavoidable. That's why it requires us to understand the entire population.

Global Health Leader & Former Dean of Harvard School of Public Health

Public health is mostly a field for research and inquiry, but it's also an arena for action. The best way to think of public health as to see it tackling the health needs of an entire population rather than individuals (that is mostly what medicine does). I am a physician, but when I went into public health I said that my position was now that society would be my patient.

Global Health Leader & Former Dean of Harvard School of Public Health

It's inevitable for complex animals. Some simple animals avoid aging by exporting absolutely all the entropy they create, but that's because they don't contain any material that stays in place unrecycled. Basically, if an animal has any organs that rely for their function on being built out of long-lived cells (like our brains, for example), it's going to age.

Biogerontologist researching aging reversal and life extension therapies