01/32/2014: “Smallpox: Last refuge of an ultimate killer”
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140130-last-refuge-of-an-ultimate-killer/all
The article that I read touches on the ethics of weapons research – should we study something that potentially is a weapon? Or should we destroy anything that could be used to harm people before we get a chance to gather scientific information? Moreover, this article underscores a couple bigger questions, namely: What is life? What can humans justify killing? When is it acceptable to kill in order to save others?
I find this article thought provoking because it makes me challenge my current views on the death penalty. It is my opinion that if we take the life of a murderer, we are murderers ourselves. While clearly there are large differences between smallpox and murderers, I found myself considering the death penalty when reading this article because the article points out the smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone. If smallpox were a human, smallpox would certainly face the electric chair (although I don’t think a human would ever manage to kill that many people, so clearly this is a theoretical situation). What troubles me is the fact that I think killing 300 million people justifies eradication, but killing only a few does not. Is there a threshold for which the death penalty becomes just? Just how much death does one have to cause before being permanently stopped?
This article has also made me question how many risks we should take for scientific discovery. Specifically, should we keep potentially harmful substances around so that we can study them? The article says “after smallpox was eradicated from the environment, a handful of labs across the world kept live samples of the disease for research purposes, such as developing treatments and vaccines” (Nuwer). However in 1978, Janet Parker died from the smallpox virus after being near a lab where the virus was kept. It is hard to gauge the benefits of studying smallpox against the potential repercussions of a lab accident. If scientists cannot create an environment where they can safely study smallpox, I think that smallpox should be destroyed. However, the article talks about the extreme safety measures in place to keep smallpox from harming humans and it seems like scientists have found a way to keep the virus isolated from humans. The article further suggests that by keeping the virus around, terrorists might try to steal a sample and weaponize smallpox! I also believe that we should not consider smallpox as a potential biological weapon because we are going to be handicapped if we don’t research things that are potentially dangerous and I do not think fear should stop scientists from experimenting.
I think that smallpox should be destroyed because it has killed millions of people, but I also think that smallpox should be kept around in the interest of scientific discovery. Perhaps I need to ask an even bigger question: is a virus “life”? When thinking about this question, I read another article – “Are Viruses Alive” by Luis P. Villareal (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-viruses-alive-2004/). This article initially says that viruses are “thought of being in a gray area between living and nonliving” (Villareal). However I think this article shines when Villareal compares a virus to a seed, writing, “they have a certain potential, which can be snuffed out, but they do not attain the more autonomous state of life” (Villareal). The article and I share the opinion that a virus is not life because viruses “parasite essentially all biomolecular aspects of life” (Villareal). In other words, viruses depend “on the host cell for the raw materials and energy necessary for nucleic acid synthesis, protein synthesis, processing and transport, and all other biochemical activities that allow the virus to multiply and spread” (Villareal). So now I urge you to consider one final question – Do we have the right to destroy something if it isn’t life?