Assignment 3: Top 10 Inventions 2.0

Hi everyone,

As per our professor's request, I am here to list out my new top 10 inventions. Taking into consideration the suggestions of my peers, I have implemented a clear and decisive ranking system for this assignment. I argue that the most important inventions are ones that save lives. My logic is simple: what is the point of an invention if only a fraction of the world's current population are alive to use it? So here is my list of the top 10 life-saving technological innovations as well how it saves lives and the number of people each has saved.

1. Synthetic Fertilizer - 2.72 billion lives saved! Invented by Fritz Haber, this is the foundation of modern agriculture. Prior to this, farmers needed to use manure to grow crops, which was sufficient for small levels of agricultural production, but not enough to sustain large-scale human population. The  International Fertilizer Industry Association reports that 40% of the world's population is supported by food grown by fertilizer.
2. Anticoagulation - 1.094 billion lives saved! Improving on the work of his predecessors, Richard Lewisohn discovered the exact concentration of sodium citrate that was necessary for blood transfusions, thus allowing blood to be stored outside the human body in order to be given to patients who need it.
3. Bifurcated Needle - 973 million lives saved! Vaccination had just been accepted, but without this invention, nobody would have been able to receive the safest level of treatment. The only means of injection before the needle was multiple stabs into the patient's arm which, although effective, was painful and inefficient.
4. Vaccination - 973 million lives saved! The very first vaccine was invented by Edward Jenner to combat smallpox. He experimented on a local farmer's son and proved that a small dose of cowpox would prevent him from getting smallpox. Needless to say, it worked.
5. Specialized Wheat Breeding - 259 million lives saved! Norman Borlaug invented a method of breeding wheat to be both resistant against disease and harsh environments. For regions like Asia that experienced high population growth, wheat breeding was necessary to drastically increase and protect farm production of food.
6. Water Chlorination - 117 million lives saved! Linn Enslow was responsible for this water purification method. Prior to this, water supplies would easily be contaminated by a variety of issues including times of rain that caused runoff of toxic materials.
7. Penicillin - 82 million lives saved! Howard Walter Florey created the world's first antibiotic, the start of modern medicine. This was the only substance that killed bacteria without harming patients, as prior to this, doctors would use mercury and even arsenic.
8. Oral Rehydration Therapy - 54 million lives saved! Invented by David Nalin to address death by dehydration due to diarrhea, this innovation saves millions of people every single year, especially in 3rd world countries where lack of running water is a rampant problem. Moreover, the ingredients (water, salt, sugar) are so easy to obtain that everyone can access ORT.
9. DDT - 21 million lives saved! Paul Müller was the mastermind behind the world's first insecticide, preventing the spread of incredibly dangerous diseases such as malaria and typhus. Although contested by environmentalists, proper application of DDT kills flies and mosquitoes without harming the environment.
10. Insulin - 16 million lives saved! Frederick Banting invented the world's first miracle drug in order to address diabetes. Prior to this discovery, nobody had a clue as to what insulin was, where it came from, or what it did. By removing the pancreata of a cows and extracting insulin, he was able to treat the lives of millions of people.