It was very exciting to see the Artemis 2 rocket launch into space on 1st April. Less than 20% of today’s population were old enough to remember the first moon landing in 1969 but Neil Armstrong’s memorable words are known to all. At the time NASA needed an airplane hangar to house all their computers. They cross checked their maths using slide rules. It is a marker of how far technology has advanced in over half a century that the equivalent computing power is now available in a smart phone. The Apollo missions of the 1960s reached their zenith with the first moon landing. There were another 6 landings that followed but the only other remembered event from that era of space travel was the Apollo 13 mission. This is because it went wrong, the story immortalised in the Oscar winning Tom Hanks film. His words ‘Houston, we have a problem’ is probably the second most famous space related quotation. Maybe this is because we like stories that involve challenges; the success of the Apollo missions became too predictable and hence less interesting.
I was wondering whether there are parallels with medicine and how much we have progressed since the 1960s. The most obvious advance is our ability to produce vaccines. The Covid vaccine was manufactured in less than 12 months, light speed compared to the development of vaccines in the 20th century. Over the last 60 years in the UK, Smallpox, Diptheria and Polio have been eradicated. Deaths from measles, infertility from mumps and pregnancy complications from rubella are not seen, apart from in areas where vaccine uptake is poor. Epiglottis, a fatal childhood condition, has disappeared due to the Haemophilus B vaccine and giving Human Papilloma Virus vaccines to adolescents means Cervical cancer will be a rarity in 50 years time. Shingles, Meningitis, Flu and Covid all cause less morbidity and mortality due to vaccine delivery. This is an impressive list of medical successes, however, just like the moon landings in the 1960s we have come to accept them as routine. Once the initial excitement of a new vaccine launch is over, they only make the news when there is a sensationalist link to possible complications. The news stories always get a lot more prominence than the science would advocate. We are quick to forget that vaccine delivery is the safest and most successful medical intervention we have.
Interest in space has been reignited; we have realised again how amazing it is that we can have conversations from earth with astronauts 250,000 miles away, who are travelling at 25,000 miles per hour, towards and around the moon. Less exciting is the fact that we will be running our first Spring Covid Booster clinic for over 75-year-olds on Wednesday 6th May. However, this is the continuing part of our mission to ensure Covid does not return.
Anthony O’Brien, Wyndham House Surgery