What would Lister do in a post-pandemic world?    Prof Iain McInnes          Jan 12 2022
Channel: Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow
Date: 2022-01-13

“What would Lister do in a post-pandemic world?”

The pandemic arising from the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has been a salutary reminder to society of our interdependence on each other within societies, our global connectivity and our environment.  The global interactions upon which so much progress has been built, rendered us vulnerable to rapid viral spread.  That said, it has truly been “the worst of times and the best of times”.  Infectious diseases have been the catalyst to extraordinary advances in medicine throughout history – consider for example the work of Joseph Lister in the ‘1860s’. Herein, I shall reflect on key lessons learned in medicine as we have responded to the pandemic in the last two years. This will prompt a conversation around health care imperatives facing us in the next decade using immune and infectious diseases as exemplars of the changing face of medicine.