Lest we sleep the sleep of death

John Whittenberger was the archetypal big man on campus: football player, fraternity man and founder of Union Board.\nWithout "Whit," as his classmates called him, we wouldn't have the Union building. Probably no other undergrad has left such a legacy at IU.\nThe IDS recalled Whit's life in a Sept. 27, 1910, editorial, when he was a senior. The editorial didn't celebrate another of Whit's accomplishments. It was an obituary.\nWhittenberger, the son of a wealthy farming family and a student at one of the Midwest's top schools, had died of typhoid fever the day before.\nHis story would be unusual today. Few Americans die from the diseases that used to be major killers, like the flu or tuberculosis. Instead, we die in our old age of heart disease, cancer, strokes and accidents.\nThat wasn't the case a century ago. Thomas Clark's history of IU records that in 1905 the Delta Gamma house had to be quarantined during an outbreak of smallpox. Eight students died. That outbreak was only the most serious of a chain of epidemics on campus. \nPoor sanitation contributed to IU's health problems. In 1910, twenty students caught typhoid fever. A state health officer said they probably got the virus from eating in restaurants with "open privy vaults." Students on campus were still getting water from public drinking cups.\nPrimitive sanitation killed as surely as typhoid. On Sept. 28, 1910, the IDS said Whit's death reminded the campus of two top students -- both athletes, both business managers at the Arbutus -- who had died of food poisoning.\nWhat changed? Why don't a few dozen IU students each year die of typhoid or TB or the flu?\nIt's not because we're smarter or better than the students of Whittenberger's day. We're not. We're healthier because of some good political decisions and some economic luck. Without vaccinations and better sanitation, we'd be cut down in the prime of life just like Whittenberger.\nNot everyone is so lucky.\nOnly 400 people contract typhoid fever in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But more than 21 million people worldwide will develop typhoid this year, and 200,000 will die from it.\nAnd typhoid isn't even all that serious of a disease. The real threats, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), are HIV, TB and malaria. Together they account for over 300 million illnesses and more than 5 million deaths each year.\nIn emotional terms, the costs of these diseases is unimaginable. In dollar terms, the costs are merely staggering.\nWHO estimates that if malaria were eliminated, Africa's annual GDP would increase by $100 billion. AIDS, by destroying lives and the fabric of society, drags countries deeper into poverty.\nJohn Whittenberger died from the consequences of ignorance, not because he was a bad person. In the same way, Third World mortality is a reflection of inadequate access to health care, not immorality.\nCures for TB and malaria are cheap and widely available. So are effective programs to stop the transmission of HIV. But countries with a healthcare budget of $50 per person per year can't afford even cheap cures. And so, wracked by disease, afflicted countries fall further and further behind.\nFirst World countries have the resources Third World countries lack.\nWe can easily afford the cost of a global campaign against disease. We'll earn back what we spend in the long run. And we'll guarantee to millions of people what John Whittenberger, for all his success, never had: a quiet death, in bed, of old age.