I recently read a powerful book by Johan Norberg entitled Progress that laid out some ideas that I been noodling on lately and recapped in my previous note Better. He captured the ideas and supporting data much better so I summarize his key point below.

Terrorism, ISIS, War in Ukraine and Gaza, crime, mass shootings, famines, floods, pandemics, global warming…..doom and gloom everywhere. But despite what we hear on the news (and not minimizing the ongoing impact of human suffering), the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever.  Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labor, and infant mortality are falling faster than any time in history.  Life expectancy has increased more than twice as much in the last century than it did in the previous 200,000 years.  The risk of a person being exposed to war, die of a natural disaster, or subjected to dictatorship is lower than any other epoch.  A child born today is more likely to reach retirement age than his forebearers were to live to be 5. It is surely humanity’s greatest achievement.

The data is compelling.  The global experience of life has gotten A LOT better over the past several hundred years.  This progress gets distorted by our instant global communication and media…and our short memories.  We swim so deeply in modern invention that we forget the many layers of toil and discovery that it is built upon.  Many can’t remember what life was like without modern medicine, safe water, sufficient food, electricity and sanitation systems.  Sometimes we need to step back and take in the big picture…

Thank you God for progress.

This is a picture of my new Firefly Petunia on the patio (taken at night under a dark blanket). The firefly petunia is bioluminescent – meaning it glows in the dark! This petunia was created by modifying its genome with some bioluminescence genes from a mushroom. Bioluminescence is the production of light by living organisms. It’s a chemical reaction in which an enzyme (luciferase) catalyzes the oxidation of a light-emitting molecule (luciferin).

I am fascinated by bioluminescence and have come across it several times in my travels. When Vicky and I were in the San Juan Islands in Washington we took a nighttime kayak adventure to a special place with bioluminescent algae in the water. When disturbed the microorganisms would emit a brief glow – creating a “pixie dust” effect as we ran our paddles through the water. Cool.

I also came across bioluminescence in the famous Monterrey Aquarium which was putting on an exhibit about the deep ocean that included many bioluminescent sea creatures and jellyfish. You could literally see the pulsing light travelling through their bodies (see video below). And of course many of us grew up chasing fireflies and their pulsating glow in the backyard at night.

Bioluminescence is used in biomedical research, such as imaging cancer cells, tracking infections, and developing biosensors for detecting toxins. Firefly luciferase is widely used to study gene expression.

It was long assumed that access to sunlight was a fundamental requirement for life. Finding bioluminescence in life forms in the very deep ocean has forced us to reconsider that assumption.

Thank you God for bioluminescence.

I am getting ready for a trip to Nepal with my dear friend Bobby – celebrating a lifetime of ministry partnership together. Seeing the Himalaya’s and Mt. Everest will knock off a bucket list item for sure. No we are not climbing Everest

I had to get caught up on my vaccinations – including measles, hepatitis and yellow fever. I feel like Superman now! But it got me thinking vaccines and our modern capabilities. Truly one of the greatest human achievements. Vaccines have been a key part of the amazing increases in life expectancy in recent history. In 1900 worldwide life expectancy was 31. Today it is 71…and growing fast. Most of that increase has come in just the last four generations.

Edward Jenner used the term vaccination in 1796 because his vaccine for smallpox was from cows (Latin vacca “cow”). Since then, many vaccines have been developed saving countless lives. Maurice Hilleman may be the champion in terms of lives saved with his measles vaccine in 1968. Measles is estimated to have killed about 200 million people. He developed 25 other vaccines – including many still used with children.

Vicky and I were able to sit in on a personal telling of the fascinating story of how the original COVID vaccines was developed. Francis Collins, former head of NIH (and evangelical Christian), and key vaccine researcher Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire told of the mixture of great science, new research tools, global cooperation, and some good fortune (they were already researching a similar virus – and so got a running start).

The COVID vaccine was developed in record time – less than one year. The previous record for a vaccine development was the mumps in the 1960’s which took 4 years. My gut feeling

is that the whole experience with the development, production and distribution of COVID vaccines will prove a beneficial “trial run” in the future when the virus could be even more deadly.

Modern science is bringing us incredible capabilities to fight diseases. The current goal is to develop a vaccine for any unforeseen pathogen within 30 days! Vaccines will also become personal – designed for our specific genome. I received a custom-made experimental cancer vaccine in 1998 at Stanford to treat Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma – in which a piece of my tumor was extracted, genetically manipulated and then “vaccinated” back into my body to fix my immune system.

Thank you God for vaccines.