Brain Archive

serious biohazard response is only way
posted on 12/21/2001 6:19 AM by craighubleyus@yahoo.com

Sounds like the devices they really want for use in urban areas are for tracking down "the bad people", rather than effective biohazard response.
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They can waste a lot of money on this approach but in the long run there's no way it can work. In the long run, all events tend to accidents, and all groups tend to changing the definition of coincidence, with no known place to go to track them down at all. The current generation of groups will probably be eliminated to be replaced by groups that leave no trace whatsoever.
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<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biohazard-response">come join 'biohazard-response'</A> to discuss this further.

Re: serious biohazard response is only way
posted on 12/21/2001 6:45 PM by grantc4@hotmail.com

Dealing with biohazards is as old as humanity itself. The history of Europe is as much a history of diseases that wiped out large portions of the population as it is of civilization and culture. A biohazard wiped out potatoes in Ireland and sent millions of Irish fleeing famine to America. The smallpox Europeans brought with them nearly wiped out the American Indian.

Those of us who survive come out stronger and less susceptible next time around. The invention of things like penicillin only hold the process in abeyance for a while, then the biohazards evolve a way around it and the beat goes on. It's a neverending war between the species and nature has no qualms about wiping out whole civilizations to determine which of us are fittest.

Humans as inventors of the biohazard is a new twist on an ironic war. It's as if we'd rather commit suicide than let nature win. We don't have enough things out there trying to kill us, such as HIV or ebola or smallpox, we have to go and invent newer, more potent variations that we can spread with powders and aerosols. The most difficult thing that man will have to survive is man himself.

Are you there, Pogo?

Re: serious biohazard response is only way
posted on 12/21/2001 9:35 PM by tig3933@yahoo.com

"The most difficult thing that man will have to survive is man himself."

I totally agree, and you are right in differentiating between historical technological advances. We used to search and create in reaction to biohazards. Penicilin. And then reacted to nature reacting to penicilin. Now, we create biohazards without specific useful goals to accomplish (necessary for existence, survival of species).

A kind of "tech-for-tech's-sake", thinking we will improve the world (genetics?) while in fact we are creating more potential catastrophies to our meaningful existence. "Meaningful existence" another subject not included in the discussions at the policy boards and think tanks that are pushing these new technologies.

Many of the "responses" discussed here would be needless if not for the lack of ethical protocol in the development of these technologies.