(2018-03-26) The50 Most Important Lifesaving Breakthroughs In History

The 50 Most Important Life-Saving Breakthroughs in History. By the 20th century, an explosion in new technologies, treatments, and other science-backed practices helped to increase global life expectancy at an unprecedented rate. From 1900 to 2015, global life expectancy more than doubled, shooting well past the 70 year mark.

while many of these innovations have some linkage to the medical realm, there are also breakthroughs in sectors like energy, sanitation, and agriculture that have helped us lead longer and healthier lives.

Toilets, synthetic fertilizers, blood transfusions, the green revolution (also known as the “Third Agricultural Revolution”), and vaccines are each credited with saving 1 billion lives. Meanwhile, pasteurization, water chlorination, antibiotics, antimalarial drugs, and the bifurcated needle have saved hundreds of millions of lives each.

It turns out that satellites have actually saved 250,000 lives, thanks to the ability to better forecast natural disasters.