E15: “How golden ages really start—and end”, a major CRISPR breakthrough, measles vaccinations have prevented over ninety million deaths, and much more:
Tony Morley, May 28th 2025
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"Of all the golden ages, the greatest is here and now. Of all the progress of the past 10,000 years in raising human living standards, half has occurred since 1990." — The Economist
How golden ages really start—and end:
Johan Norberg's latest book, Peak Human, has just dropped, and is acclaimed in its embrace of an open, connected, collaborative, and prosperous world, and what we stand to lose if we turn our back on globalization.
If you're new here, we're about as white-pilled on Norberg as it's possible to be. This, most recent book builds on banger after banger from Johan, from Progress in 2017, to Open in 2021, and then onto The Capitalist Manifesto; and finally to Peak Human in 2025 — Norberg is a must-read for 2025.
The Economist
"The emperor Augustus introduced a flat poll tax and a modest wealth tax. Extra income from hard work or innovation suddenly faced a marginal tax rate of zero. Small wonder Augustan Rome grew as rich as Britain and France were 1,500 years later."
Significant Declines in Poverty Across India
Economic growth in India has driven significant declines in poverty across all demographics. While rural regions have seen poverty decline from 30% to 3.9% in a little over a decade, “poverty has come down among all communities.”
“Overall, the estimates reveal a remarkable decline in poverty across India in the last 12 years. In rural areas, poverty declined from 30.4 per cent to 3.9 per cent, while in urban areas, it declined from 26.4 per cent to 3.9 per cent.” — The Indian Express, Express Opinion, Shamika Ravi
We're slowly moving away from animals as chemical factories, and that's much-needed progress
“Horses bled for antivenom, crabs drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives — but we need to find ways to scale them.”
For thousands of years, civilization has relied heavily on animals harvested from the natural environment, and later bread for valuable chemicals and materials from their bodies; however, modern technology may slowly be turning the tide on “animals as chemical factories”
“Biotechnology not only reduces the inefficiencies of collecting molecules from animals but also the harms associated with working with them in the first place.”
wip-admin
A major CRISPR breakthrough transformed this child's life, holding significant promise for treating genetic disease
A breakthrough personalized gene-editing treatment has healed a 9½-month-old baby with a rare genetic condition. The treatment delivery method may hold the potential to help people with other uncommon genetic diseases, and perhaps much more.
Emily Mullin
“Though it will take a lot of work to get there, my hope is that someday no rare disease patients will die prematurely from misspellings in their genes, because we'll be able to correct them,”
“It eventually could also be used for more common genetic disorders like sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease and muscular dystrophy. And, he said, it “could really transform health care."
Ian Sample
“The promise of gene therapy that we’ve heard about for decades is coming to fruition, and it’s going to utterly transform the way we approach medicine,” "“Although this has been a very specific approach, partly motivated by the devastating nature of the disease, it represents a milestone that demonstrates these therapies are now a reality."
The Logistics of Fresh Fruit, Wendover
The logistics of 24/7 — 365 fruit availability in the United States is a feat of global logistics, an incredible beacon of human progress and a triumph of globalization. Here's how it's done for a selection of fruit. — The Logistics of Fruit, Wendover
If selected, I'll hopefully speak at the TEDxCanberra Open Mic Night on June 17th, 2025, about how the container, among other things, helped shape the prosperity of not only fruit availability but also the entire global economy. If you'd like to support the application, bump it up on X/Twitter here:
“I've applied to pitch TEDxCanberra Open Mic Night, June 17th, 2025. If selected, I'll speak on how trade, free markets and globalization have driven progress, prosperity and living standards; and what we stand to lose if we turn our backs on openness. https://tedxcanberra.org”
A breakthrough Alzheimer's blood test has been approved for use in the United States
"The very first blood test for Alzheimer's disease detection has been green-lit by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), providing a simpler and less invasive method for early diagnosis and speedier intervention. It's a milestone moment for medical science."
Depositphotos
Researchers have proposed a novel method for treating mosquitoes for malaria
In a battle against one of humanity's most significant and longest-standing killers, researchers are working on a new pair of drugs that can successfully rid mosquitoes of the deadly malaria parasites, curing them rather than killing them with insecticides; and malaria-free mosquitoes can't infect humans.
"We haven't really tried to directly kill parasites in the mosquito before this, because we were just killing the mosquito," “I think this is a really exciting approach, because it's a totally new way of targeting mosquitoes themselves.”
Famines have decreased in both frequency and severity, with the result being far fewer lives lost to hunger globally
In the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, famines killed over 10 million people per decade. In recent decades, that number has fallen to roughly one to two million per decade. — Famines kill far fewer people today than they did in the past
“Overall, we can see the rapid decline of famine mortality as one of the great accomplishments of our era, representing technological progress, economic development and the spread of stable democracies.”
Bastian Herre
Long live economic growth
The link between economic prosperity at the individual and national level, and life longevity, is unquestionable. Generally speaking, the wealthier a country, the longer lived its people, the lower the child and maternal mortality.
“Variation in income can explain over seventy per cent of the variation in infant and child mortality. No country with an income per capita above $10,000 has an infant mortality rate above two per cent.” — Progress, Johan Norberg
Visual Capitalist
The measles vaccine was a life-saving breakthrough
Fifty years ago, measles killed millions annually. Vaccination put an abrupt end to the suffering wrought by the disease. “In just the last fifty years, it’s estimated that measles vaccinations have prevented over ninety million deaths worldwide.”
By: Saloni Dattani and Fiona Spooner
“In just the last fifty years, it’s estimated that measles vaccinations have prevented over ninety million deaths worldwide. Two to three million people would die from measles every year without them.”
A saliva test may help "turn the tide" on prostate cancer, UK scientists claim.
A new test developed by UK researchers may lay the groundwork for a tool that could save thousands of lives, with early tests already saving lives. The test can quickly and non-invasively analyse men's DNA to determine who was born with the genetic markers for a higher risk of developing prostate cancer.
"We can identify men at risk of aggressive cancers who need further tests and spare the men who are at lower risk from unnecessary treatments," she added
Growth Is Good: A Tonic to Anti-Growth Environmentalism
"This seeming paradox is explained by human ingenuity: each new person brings not just another mouth to feed but another mind to solve problems. Thus, attempts to limit population growth to save the planet are self-defeating—they reduce humanity’s capacity to innovate and develop solutions to environmental challenges."
Human Progress
Without optimism, we won’t reach our next golden age
“In 200 years, the share of people in extreme poverty globally has been reduced from roughly 8 out of 10 to fewer than 1 out of 10. Life expectancy has shot up from 30 to 74. We have had a good run over these 200 years.” — Johan Norberg, for CapX
"Fearful cultures often abandon intellectual curiosity and international trade and that often turns fear into a self-fulfilling prophecy, since it shuts off the sources of novel ideas, methods and technologies that could have helped them to deal with those problems."
Johan Norberg
Artificial intelligence and genetics can help farmers grow corn with less fertilizer
Researchers in the United States are employing AI to better understand which genes collectively govern nitrogen use efficiency in critical staple crops, with the goal of helping farmers improve their crop yields.
"By identifying genes-of-importance to nitrogen utilization, we can select for or even modify certain genes to enhance nitrogen use efficiency in major US crops like corn,"
Rachel Harrison
Root Source: NUE regulons conserved model-to-crop enhance machine learning predictions of nitrogen use efficiency, May 14th, 2025
Global child mortality has fallen dramatically in recent decades; however, the most recent progress is part of a much longer trend
By: Hannah Ritchie
"But in the last 30 years, child mortality rates have plummeted in low-income countries. In Ethiopia, they’ve dropped from 20% to 5%, as shown in the chart below. The Gambia and Afghanistan are just two more examples of countries with dramatic declines."
“As Bill Bryson wrote, “The world before the modern era was overwhelmingly a place of tiny coffins.”
“Many low- and middle-income countries have reduced these rates by 5, 10, or 20 percentage points over the last 30 years.” — In most rich countries, child mortality has more than halved in the last thirty years
I wrote about my personal experience as a parent with nearly losing a young child to infection back in 2023, for Profectus Magazine, “Celebrating Global Progress on Maternal and Child Mortality”
“I remember lifting his limp, silent body from the chair and carrying him to the car”
Tony Morley
“The world has made remarkable progress in reducing child mortality. Since 2000, the global under-five mortality rate has fallen by 52 per cent”
“Over 90 countries reduced their under-five mortality rates by at least two-thirds from 1990 levels” “This progress not only means millions of children’s lives saved – it also demonstrates that ending preventable child deaths is an achievable goal.”
Violent crime is falling rapidly across America
Many major cities across the United States are seeing marked decreases in the prevalence of violent crime, with Philadelphia and Baltimore seeing some of the greatest reductions.
“Jeff Asher, an analyst who compiles a real-time crime index from agency-level records, reckons that this year is on track to be the least murderous nationwide since the 1960s.”
The Economist
“The good news is that lower levels of violence can be self-reinforcing. With fewer murders, detectives have more time to solve each one. With fewer calls, beat cops can do more to build trust.”
An Experimental Obesity Pill Mimics Gastric Bypass Surgery
"A novel drug that produces a temporary coating in the small intestine could be a new strategy for weight loss—and an alternative to surgeries and GLP-1 drugs."
Emily Mullin
Support for Nuclear Energy Production in the United States is Slowly but Steadily Growing
"A majority of U.S. adults remain supportive of expanding nuclear power in the country, according to a Pew Research Center survey from May. Overall, 56% say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity."
Carrie Blazina
A new blood test has been developed that could speed up the diagnosis of rare diseases in babies
"A new blood-based test that could help speed up diagnoses for children born with rare genetic disorders has been developed by researchers in an effort to provide answers – and treatments – sooner."
Nicola Davis
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