Big Trouble

Food for thought.  I wrote this three years ago and never published it.  It May have been a little too prophetic.  I worry now more than ever.  Maybe the dream is still possible.

My Beautiful Millenial Children

Well, 

Here I go again.  I am training for a 100 km cycle to raise funds for our beloved foster children in Lesotho. I am nervous this year because my bones and joints are getting old and the training is painful.    Time to train has been limited but I want to build a new foster home for six AIDS orphans that are now living in the back of a church.   In previous years, I have raised $13,000 with this effort, but this year I want to raise more than $20,000.

Here's why.  We are in big trouble on this planet.  I think about it all the time.  I worry about my children who are now young adults and I worry about their generation.  As I approach my 55th birthday, I now worry, every day, about my grandchildren and they aren't even born yet.  When my kids were little, I would sit them down at Tim Horton's once a week and remind them that I was Italian.  As such, they were obligated to live within 2 km of my house and give me 5 grandchildren each.  

I don't wish for that anymore.  I try to imagine the kind of world my grandchildren will live in and if fills me with fear.

I am a family physician, HIV physician and AIDS activist.  I founded an organization called Bracelet of Hope 13 years ago and our goal is to end the AIDS pandemic in Lesotho.  That may sound like a crazy goal to you but it is not.  It is a necessary goal and an achievable goal.

Here is why we are in Big Trouble.

Three massive global forces are rapidly changing our world in dramatic ways:  Information technology, globalization and climate change.   The world is not just being changed by these three forces, it is being reshaped by them and the rate of change exceeds our human capacity to adapt to these changes.

The rapid change and the lack of time to adapt to protect us from the negative consequences of these changes has allowed for this enormous space in which the worst impacts of information technology, globalization and climate change are thriving:  turmoil in politics in both developed and developing countries, information breaches, terrorism, mass shootings and one environmental disaster after another.  Did anyone notice that British Columbia is burning?  Our new 'normal' they say.  It isn't the new normal in the future I see for my grandchildren, the planet or humankind.

 

And the worst negative impact....the rise of narcissists; power-hungry, self-centred leaders elected in part, because of the power of false information and social media.  These powerful leaders don't care about what is best for you, what is best for humankind, what is best for the planet.  They care about money and power.  

They'll watch the planet burn and millions die from the effects of preventable poverty and disease, at a time when we can wipe out both.  


But not for long.  We have the power to make their play time short.  Because in that same enormous space between the massive changes in our world and our ability to adapt to them sits not only the power-hungry narcissist making terrible decisions that may wipe out the future of our grandchildren, but also the activist, the scientist and ordinary, good people like you and me.

And we have power, BUT WE MUST STAND UP!

 I am an eternal optimist and I will always believe in the inherent power of one and the collective power of many to drive positive change, to adapt in a crazy world and to learn to thrive.

Here is one miracle of science and technology that has spanned the relatively brief life of my career.

At the age of 23, I was a second-year medical student doing an elective in infectious disease at Dalhousie University.  I just happened to be in the room when the first dose of AZT ( one of the first drugs available to treat HIV) was given to the first patient in the country.  AZT was not effective on its own and he did not survive but his life inspired me to grow a career that involved caring for those with HIV.

I helped young men die a terrible death for the first 6 years of my practice.  Then, in 1996, a cocktail of HIV medications was found to be effective in controlling the disease.  Just one month after prescribing these medications and my terminally ill patients returned to good health.  We called it the Lazarus effect.  The drug regimen was complicated with handfuls of pills taken several times a day.  There were often toxic and even deadly side effects.

In 2007, that complicated HIV drug regimen was replaced with Atripla:  three combined medications in one pill given once a day.

By 2012, research showed that if you treat an HIV positive person and reduce their viral load to undetectable levels, they virtually cannot transmit the virus.

In 2013, stats showed the effectively treated HIV positive person can live a normal life expectancy.  

By 2016, 5 one-pill once daily regimens became available that are so powerful they have the capacity to keep patients alive until the cure with almost no side effects and very rare serious complications.

In 2018, we believe the cure for HIV is less than 10 years away.  The WHO has set new targets, the 90:90:90 treatment targets to the end of AIDS by 2030:  90% diagnosed, 90 % treated, 90% with an undetectable Viral Load.

Our collective intelligence, our ability to collect and share vast amounts of information and use technologies to create effective treatments will allow us to end AIDS in my lifetime.

Information technology and globalization may have thrown us temporarily off balance but they have has also connected us.  

I love this excerpt from Thomas Friedman’s book, “Thank you for being late.”

"Information technology is vastly amplifying the power of one.  What one person can do both constructively and destructively has been multiplied to a new level.  One person may now have the power to destroy many but the flip side is also true, one person can now help so many more people, educate millions, inspire millions; one person can now communicate a new idea, a new vaccine, or a new application to the whole world at once.

And information technology can amplify the power of many.  Human beings as a collective are now not just a part of nature; they have become a force of nature.  All of us, acting together, now have the power to do good at a speed and scope we have never seen before:  to reverse environmental degradation, or to feed, house and cloth every person on the planet, if we set our collective minds to doing so."

Here is what you and I can do:

We can end AIDS.

We can end poverty

We can reverse the effects of climate change

We can create a fair and equitable world where every person is safe


Fill the gap!  Be generous.  Because the same money and wealth that the bad guys go after with unabandoned lust and greed, the good guys also need to create forces for good.

$20,000 will build a new foster home for six AIDS orphans in Lesotho.  Sound small to you?  What if one of them is an Einstien or a Mandela?  Once that house is built Bracelet of Hope will seek support for six mobile health units that will save 100,000 lives in a rural area of Lesotho and we will use science and information technology to get that job done.  Can't deny it, that's big.

Let's get this party for the good guys started.  Log on to braceletofhope.ca.

If anyone can throw $5,000 into the pot, heck, if anyone can make my life easier, throw in $20,000, do it.  

Too whom much is given, much is expected.  

Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik MD CCFP O.Ont, MSM

Founding Director Bracelet of Hope (braceletofhope.ca)