Two weeks ago my Food (Safety) Fight blog precipitated some comments about how we are all more susceptible to foodborne illnesses because we live in such a sterile environment, lacking exposure to pathogens that would stimulate immunity.

I promised a response in today’s blog and here it is.

In 1900, a person born in the U.S. had a life expectancy of about 45 years. In 2000, the life expectancy was about 70 years. Most people think that 25 years came about as a result of medical breakthroughs such as antibiotics, heart surgery and chemotherapy.

Wrong.

It came about because of pasteurized milk, safe community drinking water, vaccines and antibiotics.

In 1900, one out of five caskets in America contained the body of a child who had not reached his or her fifth birthday. These kids were dying from Smallpox, Diphtheria, Polio, Dysentery, Typhoid, enteritis and diarrhea.

In 2000, one out of one hundred caskets contain a young child, usually born too soon or with a non-curable birth defect.

Infectious diseases have not been eliminated, but they have been greatly reduced by vaccines that expose a child to a killed or very low dose pathogen that allows resistance to develop.

And they have been reduced by pasteurization of milk, once one of the leading causes of foodborne illness and death, and by treated drinking water.

Sure, I drank raw milk at Granddad’s house, but the milk came from one cow that was hand milked with tender, loving (and hygienic) care, not from a combination of hundreds of cows where perhaps one was not adequately cleansed, causing the whole batch to contain killer bacteria.

You can say all you want about how the Europeans introduced Smallpox to the Native Americans, threatening their very existence because of lack of exposure. But Europeans died from Smallpox also. Those that survived were immune and could care for sickened family members of neighbors, but many still died. The Native Americans had none of those care givers when first exposed.

Walk through an old cemetery on the East Coast, and you will see the names of many children with the same surname, often dying with weeks, or even just days, of each other. Something was in the air, water or food and parents buried their too young children together.

After the less than five years of age death phenomena due to an underdeveloped immune system, the next great threat to life in 1900 was childbirth. If you survived that or were a male, your life expectancy was more like 60 years than 45. All those young children dying is why the average age at death was just 45.

Kids dying from infectious diseases, not adults dying from heart attacks and cancer, is what kept the life expectancy low. Those adults were already in their 60s when they died from a chronic illness or disease.

While I'm guessing most readers would agree controlled exposure through vaccines makes sense, surely none of you would advocate going back to the good old days of building up immunity through preventable exposure to potentially fatal viruses and bacteria, would you?

What is wrong with a little exposure to killer germs?

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