28 December 2010 - disease eradication

Advanced nations, as they flush away entire diseases one by one from the world, intend to continue to vaccinate their own populations against them. It’s for safety just in case, they say, but does that hold water? No lab accident in history has ever opened the floodgates to an epidemic, so they must be thinking of bioweapons. Let’s float the alternatives: A poor unvaccinated nation can’t use a major bioweapon without sweeping itself away. And rich nations do not war against each other; they have too much to lose. These weapons must be for future use by the rich against the poor. So you see, Iran and North Korea aren’t so great a threat in the long run—unless you happen to care whether Africa goes down in the maelstrom.