The article reminds us, "In 1850, four in 10 English babies died before their first birthday." And that's an important point. Today in the developed world it seems almost unimaginable to die in childhood. (The leading cause of death in childhood in most developed countries is "accidents," especially car crashes, and they are steadily declining in rate.)

The headline is a huge overstatement. This idea that modern life makes people sick is one of the most common misconceptions on Hacker News, and I have to keep coming back over and over and over to point to facts on the issue. In point of fact, we are healthier than ever, and living longer than ever. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[1] Trends already in place in incremental improvements in disease prevention and treatment and improvement in medical practice and accessibility of health care make demographers confident in predicting that increases in healthy human lifespan will continue. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[2] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Read this to be up to date with how healthy we are recently. Vaupel's striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[3]

I suppose it could make me ill to see so many poorly evidenced statements about human health on Hacker News, but I'm still healthy and cheerful because I remind myself that few participants here have the training and background to evaluate medical claims, and those who do are able to back up what the trends really are. To me, it is alarming that rates of obesity are climbing so steadily recently in so many countries of the world,[4] and I think it's fair to say that that trend could eventually slow or even reverse the broader general trend to healthier, longer human life, but it hasn't done so yet. Obesity of the kind found in most parts of the world is a much more tractable problem than the problems that used to weaken and sicken and kill us, and I've already figured out strategies for avoiding obesity, even in middle age and even in the environment of lavish food availability I enjoy here in the United States. I build regular exercise into my lifestyle by walking rather than driving to many of my daily errands (I live in an outer-ring suburb with a city walking trail system, but I used to do the same in the inner city neighborhoods I've lived in at various times).

Summing up, antibiotics are not making us generally ill. They are killing a lot of bacteria, and most alarmingly adding selective pressure to the environment of bacteria to select descendant bacteria resistant to current antibiotics. But we are healthier than before. We can continue to become healthier than before while continuing to use antibiotics in human medicine for sick people who need them.[5]

[1] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

[2] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...

[3] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....

[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27586365

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599040#up_6599795