Health Care, "Common Sense" and a Global Health Blogging Experiment

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Today, Health Reform Watch is participating in a “Global Health Blogging experiment” coordinated by Christine Gorman of Global Health Report. Health Bloggers from around the world will all be converging to discuss a topic: for today, “prevention v. treatment,” and, to some extent—the underlying realities in which this experiment in synchronized dissemination is being conducted as they relate to global health concerns. I thought I’d take a look at the “to some extent.”

Ms. Gorman proposed this idea as a means of assembling something of a critical mass to explore issues regarding “Global Health” and as a means of gauging the mass of that mass. In addition to organizing the assemblage, Ms. Gorman also asked some prescient questions about the nature of the medium and the endeavor itself. It is here that I will focus.

She asks,

Is a social network around global health news starting to emerge organically on the web? What can we do to nurture it? Do economic realities dictate that this will have to be a volunteer led endeavor, at least for a while?

Or, another way of putting that last question: Is news about global health subject to the same market failures that afflict products for global health (e.g. free-market forces alone will not lead to new tuberculosis medications and other drugs that affect mostly the poorest people in the world)?

These are good questions. And as I think about the economic forces and the affect of such upon the dissemination of information, I find myself thinking that even with the emergence of a somewhat new journalistic paradigm—the blog— the dissemination of information is still largely governed by the older rule: zero sum. And this goes for time and money—as well as focus.

In many ways the blog is merely the modern progeny of its paper ancestor—the pamphlet, a time honored medium purveyed by amateur and psuedo-professional journalists and would be statesmen with some design on shaping policy and the contours of their fellow citizens’ minds. But it is perhaps important to remember that Thomas Paine’s revolutionary Common Sense, perhaps the most famous and influential American pamphlet of all time, was sold for a price—and it sold very well (it should be noted though that Paine donated his royalties to George Washington’s Continental Army for the procurement of mittens). It did not hurt sales that the first printing appeared at a time when King George had just denounced the Colonies to Parliament. Common Sense was of the moment; "Global Health" is not.

Media has always been largely about timing. Certainly one of the reasons why Thomas Paine’s tract became so very popular is because it fomented revolution—at a time when revolution was in the air.

To the extent that the U.S. is to play a role, the timing for global health concerns doesn’t seem to be particularly auspicious.

In this country, at present, domestic health care reform is “in the air.” And as this country struggles to take hold of the many pronged beast which health reform and universal coverage is—one might imagine that the attention of many—who might otherwise be drawn to the deplorable conditions in health care experienced elsewhere, may, understandably, find themselves drawn to issues closer to home.

There are times, due to circumstances, in which one’s labor is multiplied by the zeitgeist. As it pertains to U.S. health care, this is one of those times. But the zeitgeist is also capable of division: simply put, in 1776 if Thomas Paine had written instead about the plight of the French, the Continental Army would have had cold hands.

I have no doubt that in this age of international commerce and intercontinental flight, no one is more than a few hours away from the onset of widespread disease—and I am well familiar with John Donne’s imperative; I know that the bell doth toll for me. But I also know that this country has functioned for years without a comprehensive health care system—and that now seems to be the time to remedy that.

As such, one might imagine that members of the field, living in the U.S., who may have written and focused on both domestic and international health care in the past, may well find reason to devote their attention more fully to matters domestic at this internally critical time. I would suggest that as America seeks to resolve its own health care issues, this may be a determinate factor for the attention (or lack thereof) to global health issues. Zero sum.

But all is not lost. After American Independence, Paine got around to helping the French. In 1791 Thomas Paine wrote the very popular Rights of Man which defended the French Revolution against Edmund Burke’s attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). In 1792, despite not speaking French, Paine was elected to the French National Convention.