I'd argue that those feats were easier to accomplish than what we're trying today. We got the low hanging fruit out of the way, and now we're trying for the big

I'd argue that those feats were easier to accomplish than what we're trying today. We got the low hanging fruit out of the way, and now we're trying for the big game. Eradicating polio was just fighting one monster. It's amazing we won, don't get me wrong. But fighting cancer is a hydra. Once we make progress in one place, another pops up, then another. For developed nations, there's not a lot of low-hanging fruit anymore. We can basically cure (or treat so well that it's the same as a cure) almost any disease that threatens to cut a life short. For many of the ones we can't cure yet, we have built amazing technology around as a stopgap. Spoons that stabilize themselves so Parkinson's sufferers can eat normally aren't cheap or easy to build, certainly not something that could have been done in the 20s or even the 60s. For developing nations, progress is still moving swiftly. They're now benefiting from treatments and vaccines that are taken for granted in the developed world, so their quality of life is increasing dramatically. Tons of effort is going into curing illnesses specific to their problems, like Bill Gates with malaria, condoms, and toilets, or Jimmy Carter with the guinea worm. And it's working. We've chosen to fight harder battles because the easy fights are already won. Don't mistake that for a lack of progress.