Caveat Emptor

There is a mistaken belief that human progress follows some unending upward trajectory. Modern scientists and archaeologists know better. While it is true that successful civilizations gain much of their know-how from their antecedents many valuable innovations lay buried and forgotten, often for centuries, perhaps even lost forever.

Take for example, Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, a parasitic disease transmitted by the small black flies that plague many of Africa and South America's poor. Turns out that famous black makeup that Westerners imagined to be merely cosmetic was not to enhance the beauty of Queen Nefertiti and other ancient Egyptian royals but a salve to kill bacteria and prevent eye infections and other assaults on the immune system.

A central theme in Panama Fever, Digging Down Gold Mountain, is the irony of the French doctors being so enamored of their knowledge and scientific achievement that they fail to see their greatest threat in Panama was the lowly mosquito. 20,000 lives may not have been lost to the canal's great failure had they consulted those ancient Africans. 2,400 years ago the Greek historian Herodotus noted that in swampy areas of Egypt, some people slept in tall structures mosquitoes could not reach or under special material that allowed them to breathe but that mosquitoes could not go through. Napoleon had conquered Egypt yet the French ended up losing Haiti and the Louisiana Territory after their armies fell to the ravages of yellow fever.

No Substitute for Enlightened Government

We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us... or least our insufferable greed. Even now, when knowledge should be widely accessible the less educated can be easily tricked. For instance, the reason malaria continues to be a global killer is a simple lack of sufficient mosquito netting compounded by a scourge of fake medicines. In our brave new de-regulated world many hard drug traffickers are turning to the business of making bogus medicines because the profit margins are much greater and the penalties far milder. It is estimated that drug counterfeiters may be pulling in as much as $75 billion per year.

The Kroll Report: "Sales of counterfeit drugs in Mexico were estimated to exceed $1.5 billion in value in 2008, or 10 percent of the formal market. They are the product of a complex and lucrative shadow industry with a global reach. Well coordinated rings, often working closely with organized crime"

No one knows for certain the extent to which fake medicines have entered the market or their actual provenance. The problem is greatest in poorer countries where governments have less to spend on regulation and/or policing. Africa's leaders could take a page from those ancient Egyptians. Back around 1500 BC, Queen Hatshepsut realizing her royal chemists were trying to pass off inferior herbs in their medicines led an expedition herself to the land of Punt, near current day Somalia.



Hatshepsut's twenty-year reign saw Egypt enjoy unequaled peace and prosperity. When she wanted answers, she went to the source.