Johns Hopkins Magazine -- February 1998

FEBRUARY 1998
CONTENTS

AUTHOR'S NOTEBOOK

P U B L I C P O L I C Y A N D I N T E R N A T L. A F F A I R S

Why Metaphor Matters
Author's Notebook
By Dale Keiger

Journalists need to keep a constant eye on how their personal experiences influence what they see, hear, and think. I grew up working class, but I'm not working class anymore, and certain things are simply not part of my daily life. For example, I do not know anyone who has tuberculosis. My personal circumstances are such that I have no contact with the disease, and before I reported this story, I had no sense that it was still so widespread. Then I came upon this stunning fact in a World Health Organization annual report: the WHO estimates that one out of every three people in the world's population is infected with the tuberculosis bacillus.

That's an incredible figure. Even if the WHO has missed it's mark by a factor of two, hundreds of millions of people have been infected. Coming across that statistic changed my perspective in a hurry.

JoAnne Brown had the same awakening as she did her research. She gained a new appreciation, as will anyone who reads her book when it's published, of how profoundly sickness can shape history. She speaks of the "antibiotic interregnum" of the 1950s and 1960s, when people, Americans in particular, deluded themselves into thinking humankind would soon achieve "victory" over disease. No such luck. AIDS, tuberculosis, Ebola virus, and other infectious killers are nowhere near vanquished.

It's a sobering realization.

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