Very interesting. Thanks for the cites, Der Trihs.
You’re welcome.
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.
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.
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.
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?
But would the Russians accept that many blankets from the US?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…