Does a *disease* have a right to exist?

[scrambledeggs]

Ok I heard that smallpox has been eradicated, except for a labratory specimens in Russia, and one in the US. They are keeping those last strains around, under guard or something like that.

Question: Why dont they destroy it? I know that there have been arguments that it might be used for 'research' and such, but I also thought someone was actually arguing that it would be like exterminating a creature, and that is why they are keeping it alive.

Would the destruction of the last small pox samples be unethical -- that it can grievously harm humans, does that justify its eradication?

By all means I wouldn't cry about it, but are there any ethical issues -- for argument's sake if nothing else?

[Liberal]

The samples they have are the only ones they know of. It's a big earth.

[jtgain]

Research is a very good argument. Smallpox went from a killer of millions to almost extinct. We could learn from studying the makeup of the germ, and see if our success could translate into wiping out other diseases..

[Whack-a-Mole]

Research may well be part of it.

More I think it is a bioweapon issue. Neither side wants to use it but the other side has it so they had better have some too. Just in case...

[nameless]

Ok I heard that smallpox has been eradicated, except for a labratory specimens in Russia, and one in the US. They are keeping those last strains around, under guard or something like that.

Question: Why dont they destroy it? I know that there have been arguments that it might be used for 'research' and such, but I also thought someone was actually arguing that it would be like exterminating a creature, and that is why they are keeping it alive.

Would the destruction of the last small pox samples be unethical -- that it can grievously harm humans, does that justify its eradication?

By all means I wouldn't cry about it, but are there any ethical issues -- for argument's sake if nothing else?We don't know everything there is to know about smallpox. If a smallpox-like disease arises from a similar bacterium and starts decimating the human population, you may be glad we kept it on hand as a model system.

I don't have an ethical problem with making the smallpox bacterium extinct--I don't think it deserves to live or anything. No population "deserves" to live: the environment permits it, or the population adapts, or it dies. But for our own sake we may want to keep it handy.

I think we can make better bioweapons anyway at this point, but I'm uncertain of that.

[Yllaria]

Do they need the germs in order to make the vaccines? If so, I'd want to keep an active or activatable sample just in cast the disease isn't as gone as we think it is. I'd also want a stockpile of the vaccine. Sure, we could re-capture the germ (a virus, I'm assuming) and start making vaccine, but that would take time - time in which people would be dying.

[Szlater]

We don't know everything there is to know about smallpox. If a smallpox-like disease arises from a similar bacterium and starts decimating the human population, you may be glad we kept it on hand as a model system.

I don't have an ethical problem with making the smallpox bacterium extinct--I don't think it deserves to live or anything. No population "deserves" to live: the environment permits it, or the population adapts, or it dies. But for our own sake we may want to keep it handy.

I think we can make better bioweapons anyway at this point, but I'm uncertain of that.

Smallpox is caused by a member of the Poxviridae family, the virus Variola, it is not a bacterial disease.

Whether viruses are actually alive is a matter for debate, because they do not possess the cellular machinery to actually perform the functions of life themselves, to reproduce they need to hijack those from host cells.

The samples they have are the only ones they know of. It's a big earth.

It requires a human host for transmission in the wild, so it's quite unlikely that it exists outside of a laboratory any more.

[Whack-a-Mole]

Do they need the germs in order to make the vaccines? If so, I'd want to keep an active or activatable sample just in cast the disease isn't as gone as we think it is. I'd also want a stockpile of the vaccine. Sure, we could re-capture the germ (a virus, I'm assuming) and start making vaccine, but that would take time - time in which people would be dying.

I was thinking about that but then realized if an outbreak were to re-occur they would just recapture and culture it.

Having some on hand in a lab doesn't really get you much ahead of things. First they would capture whatever it is anyway just to figure what it is. After that they would work for a vaccine. Unless they are using the current samples to make vaccines and have a lot in storage you are no better off. You have to start manufacturing from the beginning either way.

[Der Trihs]

Do they need the germs in order to make the vaccines? If so, I'd want to keep an active or activatable sample just in cast the disease isn't as gone as we think it is. I'd also want a stockpile of the vaccine. Sure, we could re-capture the germ (a virus, I'm assuming) and start making vaccine, but that would take time - time in which people would be dying.IIRC, we are capable of manufacturing the virus from stored data. How much faster making more would be from a live sample I don't know; personally, I think the risk of an accident or theft means we should destroy it.

[elfkin477]

Do they need the germs in order to make the vaccines? If so, I'd want to keep an active or activatable sample just in cast the disease isn't as gone as we think it is. I'd also want a stockpile of the vaccine. Sure, we could re-capture the germ (a virus, I'm assuming) and start making vaccine, but that would take time - time in which people would be dying. I think if a potential outbreak was a real concern, they wouldn't have stopped routinely vaccinating against it in 1972. About 1/3rd of Americans have never been vaccinated against it, after all.

Anyway, I don't think it's like killing an animal. Viruses aren't "alive" the same way a cat or a plant are. I don't feel any worse about the idea of their total destruction than I would putting out a fire.

[scrambledeggs]

Good answers, but if they were to finally destroy the last of it -- assuming that was that -- it still seems 'strange' to sort of 'kill' the virus. Once it's gone, it never comes back.

Sort of like murdering murder . . . Not quite like stomping a beetle (they are many others), but once it's gone, it's gone.

That being said, since ethical issues don't seem to be resolvable, I'm glad we have the luxury of not having to worry about it.

[nameless]

Smallpox is caused by a member of the Poxviridae family, the virus Variola, it is not a bacterial disease.

Whether viruses are actually alive is a matter for debate, because they do not possess the cellular machinery to actually perform the functions of life themselves, to reproduce they need to hijack those from host cells.Well I am a jackass and should have looked that up. :(

[Cisco]

Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but I thought I heard a couple years ago that smallpox was back and on the rise?

On edit: Wikipedia says it's gone. I swear I remember hearing that about 2 or 3 years ago, though. Maybe it was polio or some other virus we thought was gone?

[Szlater]

Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but I thought I heard a couple years ago that smallpox was back and on the rise?

You're wrong.

The last two cases were in 1978 in England, when staff were accidentally exposed in a lab, one of whom died.

ETA: Polio is back in a big way in Nigeria, thanks to muslim clerics claiming the vaccine was a US plot to sterilise the population.

[lobotomyboy63]

There's an old joke:

Q-What's the diff between a pregnant woman and a light bulb?
A-You can unscrew a lightbulb.

I.e. if you wipe a disease off the planet by eradicating the last known lab samples, it's gone and there's no undoing that.

I/you/we just don't know what we might learn from that last strain of a disease. Maybe it holds the key to curing AIDS or cancer or...? I assume that's why they keep it around.

[Napier]

Here are some reasons to keep it alive:

Your definition of life includes viruses, and you hold eliminating a living species wrong.

You don't want to preclude future researchers from gaining understanding by studying it.

You worry that it might be found to have some future utility.

You don't want to be the one to break the necessarily continuous chain that keeps a species viable because you see that long continuous chain as a thing of beauty or significance or value in its own right (sort of like feeling an obligation to name your son Frederick Jones the 9th if you are Frederick Jones the 8th, or not wanting to move a round pebble that has spent thousands of years sitting on a rock ledge while the water polished the pebble and ledge to fit one another). It emphasizes a kind of reverence for things that have histories much longer than we individual people have.

You hold as a basic principle that humans should refrain from doing things with apparently permanent consequences, when there is an alternative that amounts to maintaining the option in what looks like a safe and manageable way. This could be paraphrased, "We should only be screwing things in the lightbulb category, if there are reasonable alternatives to screwing things in the pregnant woman category". This emphasizes an imagination for all the important issues we might not have recognized or discovered.

[OtakuLoki]

IIRC, we are capable of manufacturing the virus from stored data. How much faster making more would be from a live sample I don't know; personally, I think the risk of an accident or theft means we should destroy it.


Do you have a cite for this? I know that there are many complex molecules that can be manufactured, and tailoring existing life-forms happens routinely in the laboratory these days. But it's still hard for me to swallow the idea that we can currently take, a sample of Vaccinia virus and manipulate it to produce Variola virus.

I agree that doing such with a virus will be where we'll first be able to enter the realm of manufacturing species, but I need to be convinced that we're there already.

[Paul in Qatar]

It is very likely that there are more smallpox samples than the US and Russia have declared. How hard would it have been for North Korea, South Africa or Dr. Baker at the University of East Virginia to have kept illegal samples?

[Ferret Herder]

According to the wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox), the World Health Organization reversed their position and said the stocks should not be destroyed, but not for any "viruses have rights too" or "we need it for vaccines in case it breaks out again somehow" reason. Rather, it was deemed useful for developing new vaccines, antiviral medications, and tests. So yes, it does seem that it would be useful in case of similar viruses or in case smallpox might make a comeback, but not in an emergency response, necessarily.

Some people are still vaccinated against smallpox, FWIW - looks like it's mostly at-risk lab workers, and military personnel deployed to the Middle East.

[Der Trihs]

Do you have a cite for this? I know that there are many complex molecules that can be manufactured, and tailoring existing life-forms happens routinely in the laboratory these days. But it's still hard for me to swallow the idea that we can currently take, a sample of Vaccinia virus and manipulate it to produce Variola virus.

I agree that doing such with a virus will be where we'll first be able to enter the realm of manufacturing species, but I need to be convinced that we're there already.I found a mention in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliovirus#Cloning_and_synthesis), and another here (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1072266v1) of polio virus being synthesized from data; it's " published RNA sequence". Judging from the description it's probably not good enough to replace the live virus yet ( but that was in 2002 ). So I guess destroying the smallpox virus could be considered premature.

As a matter of interest, note that it wasn't a matter of taking one virus and turning it into another as you suggested; but of making one from scratch.

[OtakuLoki]

Very interesting. Thanks for the cites, Der Trihs.

[Der Trihs]

Very interesting. Thanks for the cites, Der Trihs.You're welcome.

[jtgain]

Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but I thought I heard a couple years ago that smallpox was back and on the rise?

On edit: Wikipedia says it's gone. I swear I remember hearing that about 2 or 3 years ago, though. Maybe it was polio or some other virus we thought was gone?

I think it was after 9/11 when the fears of biological warfare led Bush to order the Armed Forces to all get vaccinated against it.

Children in the U.S. no longer get vaccinated against smallpox, and there were terrorism fears that it could come back, but no cases, IIRC.

[Contrapuntal]

To answer the OP's question, no, a disease does not have a right to exist. Rights are an entirely human construct. Humans have rights only because they assert them, and subsequently secure and defend them, if necessary. A disease is not capable of this.

[TWDuke]

I also thought someone was actually arguing that it would be like exterminating a creature, and that is why they are keeping it alive.Well, you can find someone to argue almost anything, and in this day and age they probably have a blog. But is anybody (i.e., a significant percentage of people who aren't whack jobs) seriously claiming that a disease has a right to exist?

One can reasonably argue that there are pragmatic reasons to keep samples of the virus on hand, or that there may be reasons we haven't discovered, but the idea of a disease having rights is laughable (in my humble opinion, of course).

Mind you, I'm not a big fan of the term "animal rights" either. I believe we are obliged to treat animals humanely (at least the non-delicious ones), but I feel assigning "rights" to them cheapens the concept of human rights.

[Cisco]

To answer the OP's question, no, a disease does not have a right to exist. Rights are an entirely human construct. Humans have rights only because they assert them, and subsequently secure and defend them, if necessary. A disease is not capable of this.
Unless you just want to argue semantics about the meaning of the word "rights," you're on shaky ground here. Would it be ok to wipe out a species of mosquitoes? Mice? Horses? Mountain gorillas? Only humans have a right to exist?

[descamisado]

Research may well be part of it.

More I think it is a bioweapon issue. Neither side wants to use it but the other side has it so they had better have some too. Just in case...But would the Russians accept that many blankets from the US?

[Contrapuntal]

Unless you just want to argue semantics about the meaning of the word "rights," you're on shaky ground here.Why? Why is the meaning of the word "rights" unimportant ? If the OP were asking "Is it OK for humans to cause a disease to be non-existent" it would be another question entirely.

Would it be ok to wipe out a species of mosquitoes?Mice? Horses? Mountain gorillas? Whether or not such an act would be "OK" has nothing to do with whether or not said species have rights. I don't think it was OK for the Taliban to destroy the giant Buddhas. Did those Buddhas have rights?

I should point out that well over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct (wiped out), the vast majority of them before humans were around. Were their rights violated? By whom, exactly?

Does a mouse have a right to life? Is said right violated when a cat eats it?

Do you violate the rights of countless tiny animals when you crush them beneath your heel with every step you take? Do you ever swat flies? Spray mosquitos? Has your home been treated against termites? Do you eat meat? Did the animal the meat came from have a right to live? If so, how do you live with yourself?



Only humans have a right to exist?Did I say that? Can you show me where I said that humans have a right to exist? I said only humans have rights. I said absolutely nothing about what those rights are.

I have found that on this MB direct questions such as this often go unanswered, so perhaps you will forgive me if I do not respond to you until you have replied directly.

Existence has piss-all to do with it. I'm talking about rights. I recently had a discussion with someone here who claimed she had a right to get to work on time, and that any driver who abridged that right more or less got what he deserved.

It seems to me that you do not understand what a "right" is.

[Cisco]

All you had to say was, "I want to argue semantics about the meaning of the word rights."

[Contrapuntal]

All you had to say was, "I want to argue semantics about the meaning of the word rights."Why you think that defining the word "rights" in a discussion about rights amounts to arguing semantics is beyond me.


Kudos for avoiding the difficult questions. And thanks for the time you obviously spent in framing your response.

[Cisco]

Why you think that defining the word "rights" in a discussion about rights amounts to arguing semantics is beyond me.


Kudos for avoiding the difficult questions. And thanks for the time you obviously spent in framing your response.
You know as well as everyone reading this thread what the OP was asking and it had nothing to do about the meaning of the words rights. S/he didn't even use it in the post.

[phouka]

First, there is assuredly more smallpox out there than just the samples kept in labs. For one, The Great Influenza (I believe) mentioned a university librarian in New Mexico going through a book from the late 1800s and finding in it an envelope marked "smallpox scabs" and inside, yes, there were a bunch of crumbly scabs, presumably from people ill with smallpox. (Can you imagine calling 911 on that one? "Uh, I need the CDC and a full scale containment team. Or maybe you should just take off and nuke us from orbit.")

Second, I subscribe to the Law of Unintended Consequence. If a fiction writer can come up with a plausible scenario where destroying the known samples of smallpox virus can come back to bite us in the ass, you can just bet there are a quintillion other consequences that we cannot begin to predict or prepare for.

We're dealing with something that we currently have contained and have the tools and knowledge to deal with. I see no reason to change that.

[Master of None]

Research may well be part of it.

More I think it is a bioweapon issue. Neither side wants to use it but the other side has it so they had better have some too. Just in case...

I think Whack-a-Mole has the real answer here.

Keeping it around in case there's an outbreak doesn't make sense. For one thing, the smallpox vaccine is made from cowpox, not smallpox. Also, if there is a new epidemic of smallpox, won't there be more than enough smallpox samples around to study?

I think the real reason we keep the samples is the same reason we have nuclear weapons.

By the way, this is my first time posting, so please be gentle...