General influenza virus
Image Credit: CDC/ Doug Jordan, M.A.
Perhaps you don't remember the Alfred Hitchcock film, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", but you would probably recognize the theme song, "Que Sera, Sera". The title though, says it all - is there knowledge that we shouldn't have?
Think back to 1939. Would the world be better today without the Manhattan Project's successful conclusion with the atomic bomb? (The morals of the bomb are a completely separate discussion. I had an uncle who was deployed in the Pacific at the end of World War II. Henry claimed he would have been killed on the beaches of Japan during an invasion without the weapon's success.)
But would the world be better off today without the knowledge of atomic energy? Although I am an advocate of atomic energy, I must confess that it has been more of a distraction than positive benefit for the world.
Caution Urged for Mutant H5N1 Avian Flu Work explains that a collection of flu researchers have declared a 60 day pause in creating lab variants of the influenza. During this pause they are urging governments and policy makers to develop a strategy on how such genetic engineering can be monitored and regulated. There is urgency, because a research team in the Netherlands published a paper showing how only 5 mutations of H5N1 resulted in a virus that would spread rapidly among ferrets. Under pressure from the U.S. government, the publisher withheld the scientific details, fearing genetic proliferation.
Scientists argue they will learn valuable information about protection against pandemics if they proceed. (I can imagine teenagers arguing that they could learn something from playing with dynamite.)
Mmm. Remember Dr. Ian Malcom's declaration from the film, Jurassic Park:
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you, you've patented it, and packaged it, you've slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it.
(From IMDb.)
It seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? As knowledge has become cheap or inexpensive, civilization has become more vulnerable.
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