This generation of college graduates will be stepping out not
only into the “real world,” but into a global community
that is more closely connected than ever before ““ especially
when it comes to food, germs and genes.
This connectivity bridges conditions in distant, war-torn
countries with behavioral habits in the United States, greatly
impacting the spread of new infectious diseases and the development
of chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes.
The next few decades will only see the world continue to shrink
as technology and travel span continents with increasing
rapidity.
“When I graduated college in the early 1980s, there was
this feeling that what happens health-wise in the U.S. was very
separate from the rest of the world,” said Janet Pregler, a
professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at
UCLA and director of the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health
Center.
“But we’ve really seen a globalization of health
issues. We’re not an island, and we have to understand that
what’s happening in the world will ultimately affect
us,” Pregler added.
But with many of these issues, awareness can be the most
powerful tool for the prevention of global epidemics ““
whether they are caused by invading pathogens or personal lifestyle
choices.
“Most younger kids think they’re healthy and
untouchable,” said professor of medicine Ian Yip. “But
you want to change your lifestyle and be healthy now, rather than
after your first heart attack when you’re 50 years
old.”
One health concern of worldwide brunt is exemplified by the
global domination of fast food and the endless export of golden
arches.
“Anywhere in the world that McDonald’s starts to
open, you start seeing a lot of overweight kids, you start seeing
weight loss centers for kids,” Yip said.
Many diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, are exhibiting
alarming rises in incidence due to unhealthy behavioral factors and
a relatively newfound obsession with eating.
“The current generation has to be shying away from
thinking there is any magic out there ““ you just have to
watch your portions, eat healthy and increase activity,” Yip
said.
With increased awareness and education starting at a younger
age, perhaps the problem can be halted before it ““ and the
population ““ gets any bigger.
“Once people become obese, the treatment for that is very
unsuccessful, so we really have to be in a prevention mode,”
Pregler said. “We have to have the will as a society to do
something about that.”
Pregler hopes that future generations, perhaps starting with
this one, may eventually maintain that will.
Campaigns that changed public attitude toward a potentially
worsening epidemic have worked in the past and continue to work
today, Pregler said.
“We can get there because we’ve gotten there before
with alcohol, with smoking, and we can get there with food,”
she said.
Humans have also been brought in closer proximity to other
diseases ““ like SARS and HIV ““ by the sprawl of cities
into environments normally inhabited by animals.
“We’re going to continue to see the emergence of new
agents that we either didn’t know about or we didn’t
realize could cause disease in human population,” said Roger
Detels, the chair of the department of public health.
The spread of these diseases is also greatly impacted by the
shrinking state of the world.
Last March, the world watched as a “mystery illness”
jumped from Hong Kong to Toronto in a matter of days.
But medical advancements are tirelessly pursuing at the heels of
microbial efficiency.
A united effort by 11 labs in nine countries collaborated in a
flurry to identify and develop a diagnostic test for the pathogen
that caused SARS.
“We have better networks for identifying emerging
infections, but there is still a tremendous amount of work that
needs to be done in this area,” said Judith Currier, a
professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases.
And though scientific developments have proceeded at an amazing
speed in the last decade, medicine is ultimately still at the mercy
of individual awareness.
“We can come up with biologic strategies for treating
chronic and infectious diseases, but in the end, it’s going
to be the behavioral factors that determine the success of
those,” Detels said. “The hardest thing in the world to
change is behavior.”
The new possibilities becoming available through genomic
technology and genetic tests may also factor into lifestyle choices
for the next decade.
Treatments for diseases like cancer may one day become tailored
specifically to an individual’s family history and genetic
makeup.
“We will have the opportunity to know more about what
people’s individual risks are for certain types of
diseases,” Currier said.
“People will be able to understand more about their risk
for developing diseases and maybe that will allow them to do things
to prevent the problems,” she added.
As the applications of genetics are expected to come
increasingly into the everyday public sphere, the next decade will
also bring with it many new ethical concerns.
Techniques like cloning and cytoplasmic donation may engender
more questions than they resolve.
“The genetic technology will advance, and this will cause
us to change our definitions of really basic things ““ like
families,” said Linda McCabe, adjunct assistant professor in
the departments of human genetics and pediatrics.
“People are pursuing what’s technologically
possible, but they don’t always consider the ethical
implications until the technology is there.”
The current trends in science and health will hold a heftier,
more worldwide impact, increasing the need for college students and
those entering the job market to maintain an awareness of the
latest developments.
“People just have to be much more aware of the problems
facing the world and not only be considering what’s relevant
to them in that microcosm they’re living in,” Currier
said. “After people graduate college, they start to recognize
their place in the world and they realize the places that they are
more likely to impact.”