People are DUMB!

I heard a rather depressing story on NPR on the history of handwashing for infection control, and found a write-up online:

"In the mid-1800s, studies by Ignaz Semmelweis in Vienna, Austria, and Oliver Wendell Holmes in Boston, USA, established that hospital-acquired diseases were transmitted via the hands of HCWs. In 1847, Semmelweiss was appointed as a house officer in one of the two obstetric clinics at the University of Vienna Allgemeine Krankenhaus (General Hospital). He observed that maternal mortality rates, mostly attributable to puerperal fever, were substantially higher in one clinic compared with the other (16% versus 7%).⁵⁰ He also noted that doctors and medical students often went directly to the delivery suite after performing autopsies and had a disagreeable odour on their hands despite handwashing with soap and water before entering the clinic.

He hypothesized therefore that “cadaverous particles” were transmitted via the hands of doctors and students from the autopsy room to the delivery theatre and caused the puerperal fever. As a consequence, Semmelweis recommended that hands be scrubbed in a chlorinated lime solution before every patient contact and particularly after leaving the autopsy room. Following the implementation of this measure, the mortality rate fell dramatically to 3% in the clinic most affected and remained low thereafter.

Apart from providing the first evidence that cleansing heavily contaminated hands with an antiseptic agent can reduce nosocomial transmission of germs more effectively than handwashing with plain soap and water, this approach includes all the essential elements for a successful infection control intervention: “recognize-explain-act”.⁵¹ Unfortunately, both Holmes and Semmelweis failed to observe a sustained change in their colleagues’ behaviour. In particular, Semmelweis experienced great difficulties in convincing his colleagues and administrators of the benefits of this procedure."

The NPR story was more direct.  Basically, the doctors did not appreciate being identified as the transmission agents, and to an extent unknowingly responsible for countless deaths.  Rather than embracing the situation, they managed to drive Semmelweis from the clinic, and reverted to previous practices.  Semmelweis continued to ardently (and ineffectively) strive to make his case, with a blustery and contentious approach that made very few converts.  Eventually he lost his mind (possibly from syphilis, or stress, or who knows what?) and went into an asylum.

These are the same basic genetics in our pool today, so you can bet that people are no smarter, nor more reasonable about looking at data.  I would like to think some would just as soon not smell like cadavers when they went about, but really I'm not sure about that.   Is it really reasonable to expect our species to make progress expeditiously on less obvious world issues?