Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

Yet in the race against medicine, pathogens ultimately depend on the blind hand of fortune.

So in the struggle against natural calamities such as AIDS and Ebola, the scales are tipping in humanity’s favour. But what about the dangers inherent in human nature itself?

Biotechnology enables us to defeat bacteria and viruses, but it simultaneously turns humans themselves into an unprecedented threat. The same tools that enable doctors to quickly identify and cure new illnesses may also enable armies and terrorists to engineer even more terrible diseases and doomsday pathogens. It is therefore likely that major epidemics will continue to endanger humankind in the future only if humankind itself creates them, in the service of some ruthless ideology. The era when humankind stood helpless before natural epidemics is probably over. But we may come to miss it.

Covid, anyone?

During the second half of the twentieth century this Law of the Jungle has finally been broken, if not rescinded. In most areas wars became rarer than ever.

A very questionable statement.