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Larry Brilliant An epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox has taken on five current global threats. The good news is, he’s optimistic about finding solutions. Thought Leader Interview: Larry Brilliant by Karen Christensen While at university, you attended a presentation by Dr. Martin Those words really resonated with me, and with everybody Luther King Jr. that ‘changed you forever’. How so? who was on the stage that day. All of us went down to Missis- I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan at the time, sippi or Alabama that summer to work with Dr. King, beginning a and I was extremely depressed. My father had died a few weeks lifetime commitment to social change. He didn’t just change me before, and five days later my grandfather died. I went back to forever that day, he changed a generation. college and locked myself in my room, refusing to go out. Then I saw an article in the Michigan Daily that Martin Luther King You went on to help eradicate smallpox in the early 1970s. Jr. was coming to our campus. This was 1962, so nobody really Describe what this period of your life taught you about knew who he was yet; but for some reason, I decided to go. optimism. On the day of the presentation there was a major snowstorm In 1969 I graduated from Wayne State University’s School of – the sort of day when nobody in their right mind goes out; but I Medicine, where I was trained as a surgeon, and right after I did did. When I got to the auditorium – which could hold 2,000 people my internship, I developed cancer of the parathyroid gland. I was – there were only a few dozen students there. Dr. King got up and operated on, and I had plenty of free time while I was healing. SMITH looked at all the empty chairs, and he just laughed and laughed. He Watching the news, I saw that a group of Native Americans had LISA said, “All right, you guys, come on up here,” and we all got up on the taken over Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. One of the native BY stage and sat around in a circle with him. What was to have been women wanted to have her baby on what she perceived as Indi- an hour-long talk became four or five hours, as he spoke about his an-liberated land, but no doctor would go out there to help. There dream of a world free of racism in which “we are all in it together.” was no water, no electricity and no health care. I decided to go. ILLUSTRATION 10 / Rotman Magazine Spring 2012 THE FIVE ISSUES BEING TACKLED BY THE SKOLL GLOBAL THREATS FUND Climate Change: The climate is changing in ways that jeopardize devastation through floods and landslides. If business-as-usual human security and well being. The global warming trend we are water resource management continues, the global water demand currently experiencing differs alarmingly from past changes in the and supply gap is projected to be 40 per cent by 2030, given the Earth’s climate. This warming is largely driven by human activities projected population and economic growth. Climate variability will such as the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture, and clearing of for- only exacerbate the problem further. ests, which release heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide. The effects of rising temperatures and shifting precipitation pat- Nuclear Proliferation: Nuclear weapons retain the dubious terns are already being felt across the globe. We no longer have distinction of being the fastest way ever devised to kill the most the luxury of treating this as a future problem: climate change is people. The threat of such weapons has been compelling enough with us today and we need to tackle it from a risk management to drive a series of international agreements banning the develop- perspective. This will require aggressive actions to reduce emis- ment of nuclear capabilities. Only nine countries are believed to sions of heat-trapping gases to avoid the risks of the most severe currently have nuclear weapons capabilities. Yet these weapons – impacts, coupled with systems-based approaches to building because of the power they are perceived to convey – continue to resilience to climate variability and change. attract political attention. Iran, with its push to develop fuel-pro- cessing capabilities for what it claims are ‘peaceful nuclear power Pandemics: Few things hold the power to stop the global purposes’ and what the world believes is for creating nuclear economy in its tracks. A pandemic is one of them. In addition to weapons – raises alarms around the globe. The concern is that the high human costs of suffering, pandemics can stop travel and nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists – for whom commerce and create political tension. With globalization and the killing large numbers of people is generally a stated goal. ease of international travel, the potential for pandemics to spread quickly and widely is greater than ever before. H1N1, commonly Middle East Conflict: The Arab Spring raised hopes that a new era referred to as the swine flu, has proven relatively mild in terms of of positive change may be emerging in the Middle East. However, severity, but has spread faster than any previously known influ- there also exists an unusually high risk of conflict and instability, as enza. Envision an influenza with high mortality, such as Avian Flu, the Iranian nuclear crisis remains unresolved, the Israeli-Palestinian spreading at this speed. Tackling pandemics effectively requires conflict enters a new and uncertain phase after the collapse of the four things: good science, good business, international coopera- peace process, and revolutions and uprisings portend prolonged tion, and public awareness. internal disorder, rapid foreign policy realignments and the disin- tegration of the regional security order. In the longer-term, chronic Water Scarcity: Water is required for life, livelihoods and pros- socioeconomic problems related to youth unemployment and food perity. Its variability, both in the absence and presence of water, and water insecurity, exacerbated by climate change, will continue already poses a substantial threat to 40 per cent of the global to challenge even the most stable regimes. Addressing these population. The absence of reliable water is killing millions of peo- threats will require action on multiple fronts, none more important ple per year, threatening food security, disrupting energy supply, than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which remains the most likely restricting trade, creating refugees, and undermining authority. trigger for large-scale regional conflict. The presence of too much water is a cause of death, poverty, and After delivering a baby girl, I was airlifted off the island by We really liked living on a bus and being hippies, so a group the Coast Guard and landed back in San Francisco. It seemed like of us decided to buy two buses and drive them from London to every TV station in the world had their cameras in my face, all Katmandu. This took two years, and it was an amazing voyage. of them asking, “What do the Indians want?” Of course, I didn’t Along the way, we heard about an Indian guru named Karoli know the answer, but my picture was on TV , and I got a call the Baba who was Ram Dass’s guru and had written books about very next day from Warner Brothers asking if I would play the him. My wife Girija and I went up and lived with him for about role of a young doctor in a movie. They said they would give me two and a half years at his ashram in the Himalayas. Ram Dass, money to start a medical centre on Alcatraz, so I agreed. Danny Goleman, Steve Jobs and other seekers were there, and For the next few months, my wife and I lived on a bus that they became life-long friends of mine. travelled from San Francisco to London, and we made a movie, One day, my guru said to me, “It’s time for you to go find your Medicine Ball Caravan, about rock and roll bands featuring the destiny by working for the World Health Organization (WHO) Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Jethro Tull; the to help eradicate smallpox.” I had never thought of doing that. shoot ended with a Pink Floyd concert in Canterbury, England. I travelled down to the WHO office in New Delhi. At the time, I 12 / Rotman Magazine Spring 2012 had long hair down to the middle of my back and a beard down to large-scale regional conflict. Basically, we’ve got two peoples my belly, and they kicked me out immediately. I returned to the who both, in their minds, own the same piece of land. The Is- ashram and my guru asked, “Did you get the job?” When I said raelis were given that piece of land by people who didn’t own it no, he sent me back down. I went back 15 or 16 times, each time [the British, Europeans and United Nations]. The politics and trimming my beard, and the last time I went in I had borrowed the ethnic, religious, racial and geographic tensions and the way somebody’s ill-fitting suit. Finally, they hired me. they spill over into the rest of the world make the Middle East I started off as the mascot on the smallpox-eradication team; our biggest wicked problem, although climate change is a very they basically hired me because I spoke Hindi and I could type.
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