Interestingly both statements are true. We are both in and leagues out of the dark ages. On average we have progressed tremendously over the last 200 years, sa

Interestingly both statements are true. We are both in and leagues out of the dark ages. On average we have progressed tremendously over the last 200 years, say. That means for many diseases, we have made extraordinary progress, as evidenced by life expectancy. At the same time there are many diseases where we are simply touching the surface and have a very basic (maybe even incorrect) understanding. An example that comes to mind is we still don't know why we sleep. We have good guesses, and we are excellent at observing sleep and curing many related diseases. But why do we spend 1/3 of our lives asleep? We don't know. In other words, progress is not distributed uniformly over diseases. (On a different note, the dark ages weren't actually as dark [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740489