It is a long time I do not post anything to my private blog. Restarting from scratch in Bologna, after then seven years in Sheffield, kept me quite busy in the last period. But yesterday I felt the need, once again, to express some private ideas.
The trigger was that I watched an anime, an animation movie, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki: the wind raises. This 2013 movie tells the story of a young Japanese aeronautic engineer, who develops new amazing airplanes while his country prepares for WWII, and his wife dies of tuberculosis. It is a beautiful story, told with absolute grace and total lack of rhetorics.
but the real trigger was a single scene, where the main character travels by train to reach his young wife whose condition's turned for the worse. While he travels, worried sick for his beloved, he cries on the sheets of the calculations he is doing for his new, also beloved, airplane.
There are three themes, distinct but entangled, that developed in my head while I was watching.
The first is the fortune to have a true calling. To warn my students of the risks our work poses in term of mental health, I always insist that greatness requires obsession, but obsession damages your life; any researcher needs to find a balance between these two. But watching The Wind Rises reminded me the many times in my life, when my heart was broken, my science was always there for me, ready to absorb me entirely, taking me away from mundane pains. As Jiro (the main character) travel he cries, his pains are not forgotten, but he keeps working with his slide rule (slipstick) to finish his calculations. And of all callings, being a true engineer is an amazing one. Gianni Caproni, the Italian aeronautic engineer, says in one of Jiro's dreams: “But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”
The second theme is the social responsibility of engineers. Jiro understands that his beautiful plane will feed the imperialistic expansionism of the Samurai class, but somehow separates himself from this, he is turning his dream into reality, what other people will do with that is not his responsibility. Today is April 25th, which in Italy is the anniversary of the liberation from nazi-fascism. WWII claimed 70-80 million lives; beside Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we could remember the bombing of Tokyo in 1944, which killed over 100,000 persons, mostly burned alive. If you visit Tokyo, go the Edo-Tokyo Museum, there is a whole section on this horror. You cannot be a good engineer if you are not a humanist, who trust humanity will eventually put at good use our discoveries. But when the link of your research with military applications is so evident, as it is the intention of your government to use it for aggression, I think we should not forget that in addition the moral obligation to our dreams, we also have those due to our being citizens and humans. So let me say it with one syllable words: I believe Jiro (both the fictional character, and the real Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters) was wrong to continue his work knowing what he knew.
The third, totally unrelated (or maybe not) is a reflection on Tuberculosis (TB). To date the coronavirus has killed nearly 200,000 people worldwide. I could not find any serious projection, but let us say that one year after its start we will have three times this number, say 600,000 death. The world is mobilised, every single research funding agency is rerouting money to support Covid-19 research. But what about TB, which kills over 1.8 million people worldwide every year? I am all for this renewed attention for communicable diseases, but please do not forget those that have been around for a while, only because they are not common in developed countries. in 2016 Malaria costed 63 million DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years), HIV 59, TB 45, and other communicable disease 23. This is nearly 200 million years of life lost to these diseases. TB is a horrible disease, that infects you but remains silent until when you are weaker or older, and then it strikes you down. The Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine has been around since 1921, but this has not eradicated the disease in many countries.
To quote the Bard, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers: scientists and engineers of the world, we need be happy for our calling, because we turn dreams into reality. But we must channel this calling for the good of humanity, and when there is the risk that our discoveries can be used unethically, we must say no. Instead, we have to turn our dreams, our creative energies, toward fighting the good fight, for example getting rid of ALL communicable diseases affecting humans anywhere in the world.
