I was reading part of the NY Times early this morning when I happened to see the sky with just a glimmer of light breaking the darkness:

What a nice way to start the day.

The reading, not so nice.

I was reading this article  about recent outbreaks of e coli in fresh produce and contemplating one of the conundrums of modern life.  Here we are living in one of the most technologically advanced times in human history, in one of the most advanced communities and yet we can’t eat the lettuce, or drink the water.  The very mass production that has enabled us to live extraordinarily varied and rich lives, that gives us the potential to feed and clothe huge numbers of people, also can aide in the spread of dangerous contaminants and diseases.

What is the answer?  no one knows yet.  But I have hope in humanity, in the human capacity to find answers.  The pre-dawn patch of sky reminds me of our capacity to find answers.

The answer is not banning cattle from states that grow produce.  Nor is it living exclusively on locally-grown food.  We could never support the world’s population.  This is a movement of the relatively rich and secure.  The same advances that bring us produce from New Zealand have brought so many life enhancing improvements from which we all benefit.

I refuse to be ruled by fear of food.  Increasingly I refuse to be ruled by so many things.  Science and society has grown so complex.  The food we we eat.  The medicines we take to live longer "healthier" lives. Our electronics (I am using some now).  In the same issue of the Times is an article on how common are mistakes in drug distribution and dosing.  People don’t know what they are taking or how much.  They don’t know how things interact.  Pharmacists, nurses and even doctors  are people too, they make mistakes.  In the end we have to pay attention to what we put in our bodies, be it lettuce or medication.  It is not simple, you can’t necessarily wash the e-coli off.  You might not recover from the drug mistake.

Another article talks about how we are perhaps over-diagnosed.  Medicine has made such great advances.  But medicine cannot give us perfect lives.  We can find things earlier.  We may be able to treat various diseases or malfunctions.  But are they all something that should be treated or just variations.  People are still machines in a way, machines that work wonderfully, but things wear down, ache, feel depressed.  We can’t be perfect.  It is too easy to see ourselves as "sick" in this world.   We forget the old medical adage that "all medicine is poison".  This is true for all medicines, even the over-the-counter ones and even the ones we take for health, like vitamins and supplements.  There is a risk and a price to pay for everything we do.

Here I have written a post with too many questions and without answers.  My thoughts are rambling.  There probably are no answers and there probably are too many questions.  Perhaps we should spend more time considering them.

Me I’m going to sit down and watch the sun come up.