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53
SECTION III
PREVALENCE OF, AND CONTROL OVER, INFECTIOUS
AND OTHER DISEASES
Over the years, preventive medicine has made a considerable
contribution towards improving the expectation of life at birth.
Indeed, during the last 150 years, prodigious efforts have doubled
this figure to almost 70 years for males and 75 for females.
But what of the life-span itself which, in developed countries,
averages 75 years for men and 80 for women? Surprisingly, these
figures do not differ substantially from those set in the Bible some
2,000 years ago, viz. three score years and ten.
If longevity has not been materially altered then advantages
accruing from medical and scientific progress ought to be reflected
in living conditions for, altruistically, it should be the aim of every
generation to add quality to the life which is inherited.
Medically speaking, however, we still live in a community where
one man in every four is a bronchitic, one in every four dies from
neoplastic disease (over one third of these from lung cancer), more
than one in four from coronary occlusion and where one woman
in every four is attending a medical practitioner. This can hardly
be the Utopia for which men strive.
However, if extension of man's life-span is to be strictly limited
then, in the not-too-distant future, by reducing all mortality factors
it should be possible to defer the onset of old age and to increase
not only the period but the vigour of adulthood. In this respect,
much will depend upon even closer co-operation between Medical
Officers of Health and the Director of the Public Health Laboratory
Service in the epidemiological control of communicable diseases
and between these departments and the research and hospital
services for diseases other than infectious.
Particularly with regard to infectious disease, previous successes
of preventive medicine in which chemotherapy has played a not
inconsiderable part, have been gained largely with those "environmentally
determined" and, former "killer" diseases such as smallpox,
diphtheria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, etc., are no longer the
menaces of yesteryear.
Even so, not enough is yet known about infection-producing
bacteria and viruses and their versatility for mutation when under
attack but immunology, as a practical science, is daily growing in
stature. Our potential future ability to synthesize antibodies free