Michael Specter
Michael Specter
Michael Specteris an American journalist who has been a staff writer, focusing on science and technology, and global public health at The New Yorker since September 1998. He has also written for The Washington Post and The New York Times...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
area eleven factories million people seemingly tiny tower until
Until the Nineteen-Eighties, when Deng Xiaoping designated the area as China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen had been a tiny fishing village. Suddenly, eleven million people appeared, seemingly out of nowhere; factories sprang up, often housed in hastily constructed tower blocks.
ignore matter offer people proved safe seem shown
It doesn't seem to matter how often vaccines are proved safe or supplements are shown to offer nothing of value. When people don't like facts, they ignore them.
lab met people work
Many of the most eloquent people I have ever met work in lab coats every day.
cure diet report
There has never been a verified scientific report that chelation therapy, a gluten-free diet, or anything else can cure autism.
centers disease except facility fact highly locked remarkable scourge secure similarly stored thousands tiny vanished vault
It is a remarkable fact that smallpox, a scourge for thousands of years, has now vanished from the earth, except for two tiny vials, one locked in a highly secure facility at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, and another stored in a similarly secure vault in Siberia.
certainty forms global humans life nuclear producing soon stand threat tinker verge vintage war
If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
greatest history medical success universal
Universal vaccination may well be the greatest success story in medical history.
aids began circle covered dread epidemic felt height matched painful
I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
ancestry beneath change climate deny fact few humans pain people scares share unusual unwanted
Some people will deny anything that displeases or scares them: unusual pain in their chests, unwanted lumps beneath their skin, or the fact that humans share ancestry with apes are a few examples. Another is climate change.
believing food lying organic ourselves solve vitamins
We're lying ourselves into believing things are untrue, like organic food will solve all our problems, or vitamins will make us healthy, or we don't need to vaccinate our children.
atlantic blow diagnosed donuts eat human hurricane people sandy watch
There are people who could watch a hurricane like Sandy blow out of the Atlantic every other day and blame it on anything but human activity. They are like those who, having been diagnosed with diabetes, eat donuts for breakfast. There's not much to do about them.
angry embrace good government health pay people reason reject system vaccines
Clearly, some of the reason people embrace alternatives and reject vaccines is that they are angry and mistrustful of government and of pharmaceutical conglomerates. More than that, we pay too much for health care, it's not good enough, and the system is too complex. We need alternatives.
bolster certainly crops economies engineered health improve millions save sight struggling
By themselves, genetically engineered crops will not end hunger or improve health or bolster the economies of struggling countries. They won't save the sight of millions or fortify their bones. But they will certainly help.
animals breeding crops history humans produce seeds traits
The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and livestock.