A Plague Among Us
By Bruce McKinney
SARS reminds us that life can be uncertain. These days we receive vaccinations for what were not many decades ago dreaded and often fatal diseases. We advance but we do not wholly escape. We have the complications of an enormous population and the immediacy of air flights to carry unsuspecting contagion far and wide. In some sense we continue to share a common experience with our ancestors because we are, after all, human. Science improves. Science mitigates but science does not absolutely defeat all the forms of illness that periodically rise up to threaten us. ...