Frankenstein!

Three years ago my book club chose The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson as one of our selections.  It is a non-fiction book about the search for the source of the cholera epidemic in London in 1854.  It is a very good book, and, like most good authors, Johnson gives us not just the historical facts, buy relevance to our modern world and lots to think about.  In the last chapter of the book he talks about why workers in the poultry industry in Asia are given flu shots.  The shots don’t keep them from getting avian flu, they keep them from getting the basic, human influenza.  Why?  Because doctors and scientists want to make sure that there is no way for the deadly avian flu to mutate into human influenza because human flu, while not so deadly as avian, is airborne—easy to transmit.  Avian flu, while extremely lethal to humans can only be passed from host to victim through physical contact and is rare in humans. 

We now learn that the H5N1 virus (avian flu) has been transmuted in a lab to airborne form.  The deadliest flu on the planet has now been changed, by scientists, to a form that can be spread through any school, airport or office by a good, hearty sneeze.  We have created Frankenstein.  While the research that created this monster was done at the Erasmus Medical Research Lab in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, it was paid for by the Dutch government and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
We know what flu pandemics can do.  The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed 2% of patients.  By contrast, on the rare occasions when avian flu passes to humans, it kills 50% of them.  Dr. Donald A. Henderson, one of the leaders in the eradication of smallpox, describes H5N1 as the ultimate organism for the destruction of humans on this planet.  Sadly, there are some people who don’t think this sounds like a bad idea. 

Our government is now asking that this research be kept top secret and not published in scientific journals, fearing that it might be replicated by, “…terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.”  Some experts in bioweapons say such research should never have been done.  Others say that this research could lead to eradicating the disease or finding a vaccine to cure or prevent it.  Still others point out that it would make a very poor weapon because it attacks both friend and foe alike. 
Here in lies the real danger.  There are some crazy people out there who think this world would be better off without people.  They hate themselves so much that they transfer that hate to the whole human race.  We just need one, “
Occupy Wall Street
,” PETA fanatic, anarchist with annihilation on his mind and things get very bad, very quickly. 
I am a firm believer in the positive power of cutting edge scientific research.  I believe that there is such a thing as knowledge for the sake of knowledge and all of this should be encouraged, but deliberately setting out to create a delivery system for a disease that kills 50% of all humans who contract it is irresponsible.  Assuming that it can be kept secret is naïve.  Hoping that it won’t be used, once leaked, is living in a fantasy.  The fact that I paid for this, on foreign soil, with no guarantees of what happens next, is galling.  We have met the enemy and he is us. 

Pray for sanity, and keep the faith.

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