Albert Schweitzer; Sketches for a Portrait Book

A wonderful addition to what Charlie Munger calls a collection of inanities... This is a total Lollapalooza of when a very simple explanation and solution is found to an endemic problem, and countless human biases, misjudgements, conflicts of interests, and mistakes combine to hinder scientific progress and delay medical practices that could have saved thousands of lives...


Essentially, Mr. Semmelweis figured out that if doctors washed their hands in lime-water, maternity wards would suffer fewer cases of childbed fever. By making people wash their hands, mortality rates immediately dropped 80%+. When people stopped washing their hands, mortality rates went back up 5 fold, but because of simple human errors and tendencies which we are all prone to, and which are a part of each of us, Ignaz Semmelweis was ignored, committed to an insane asylum, and beaten to death! These are "hotshot, high-powered people" as Charlie would call the people responsible for this, and they make these terrible mistakes! We are all subject to the same misjudgement and must teach ourselves to recognize these terrible errors we commit and train ourselves out of them as best we can.

Humanity is such that an easily testable concept such as washing your hands, whose results can be easily measured, when placed against the misjudgement of man stands no chance in the short-run... Human misjudgement rules the short-term.

This is an absolutely wonderful true story.