Prevention

Jonathan Doron

Dr. Adam Johns

ENGCMP 0200

August 28, 2008

We are killing ourselves; at least that’s what Bill Joy seems to think. No, the apocalypse isn’t coming, but technology is knocking on our front door. We’re already starting to see it happen. Every time you take an antibiotic, you risk that bacteria genetically morphing to be able to resist it. Strep throat and sinusitis (two bacterial infections that are generally treated with relatively weak antibiotics) could eventually become the leading cause of death in this world. Obesity and cancer are going to seem like a joke when your seasonal allergies could kill easily kill you. What the heck were those early scientists thinking? Did they know there were forming the blueprint for the elimination of the human race? Well, we should be thanking them for now and if the right steps are taken, we can continue to cherish them as the brilliant men and women they were… not killers.

At the moment, medical researchers are focusing their work on finding even stronger antibiotics than the ones we currently use. For now, this is a blessing but, by 2030 (Joy’s proclaimed “doomsday”) they can mean the end of us. There is no doubt that (for now at least) antibiotics are a necessity and I completely condone the work that today’s researchers are doing, but they really need to start focusing their work on prevention. Right now, we’re just letting it happen and doing what we can to get rid of it once it hits. I say we just prevent it from happening altogether. It’s call immunization. Researchers should focus their work on developing immunizations on diseases such as strep throat and sinusitis. That way, when the time comes that our antibiotics become ineffective, we can conquer the disease by just preventing it altogether. We can already do it for a variety of different illnesses such as herpes, HPV, meningitis and often times even the chicken pox. If we could prevent the cases from even happening, then we don’t have to use our antibiotics to combat the diseases and in turn, not allow the bacterium that cause the disease to become resistant to today’s drugs.

Of course, everything is about money. Large pharmaceutical organizations dish out millions a year in order to fund their research for new antibiotics, which they in turn, sell and make millions. I have a new incentive for them. Imagine if every newborn child had to be immunized for the previously mentioned diseases. That’s thousands of customers a day. I’d call it a monopoly on life, and the best part is that there’s absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. If you ask me, that’s the best type of investment you can make. Of course monopolies are considered “unethical” but when you factor in the undeniable truth that we’d be killing ourselves otherwise, I’m sure the laws preventing monopolies would be willing to make a worthwhile exception. What politician would want to be forever known as the one who chose a law over the existence of man.

We are killing ourselves, and that’s the sad truth. Whether it comes in the year 2030, or it happens on the year 3000, it’s on its way. For some divine reason, humans were blessed with the ability to think and share information; fortunately for us, bacteria was not. Humans have every tool and resource they need to fight the battle and conquer the inevitable death that comes. Let’s find a way to stop the “bullet” from hitting us instead of taking it out once it already did it’s damage.