As so often, Charles Krauthammer cuts through to a central question of our time. His column today is a chilling one, and it’s about the potential for both a natural or a deliberate outbreak of a deadly flu virus. Money quote:
[R]esurrection of the [1918 flu] virus and publication of its structure open the gates of hell. Anybody, bad guys included, can now create it. Biological knowledge is far easier to acquire for Osama bin Laden and friends than nuclear knowledge. And if you can’t make this stuff yourself, you can simply order up DNA sequences from commercial laboratories around the world that will make it and ship it to you on demand. Taubenberger himself admits that “the technology is available.”
I fear we are close to the moment when our intellectual capabilities as human beings overtake our moral capacity for self-restraint. We are becoming too smart for our own good. We know too much, and have too much potential for massive destruction for major shit not to hit the fan relatively soon. I’m not even talking about unintended consequences of intellectual or scientific advances. I’m talking about deliberate use of destructive technologies to end our civilization as we have known it. Have we advanced morally as a species at the same pace that we have advanced technologically? The question answers itself. In the recent past, we feared nuclear immolation at the hands of governments, but the logic of mutually assured destruction kept the peace. Now, the very technology that empowers a blogger like me can also empower any number of murderous lunatics to kill on a massive scale. What are the grounds for hoping that the worst won’t happen in our lifetimes? What are the odds? If someone out there can provide an argument to cheer me up, I’d be grateful.
The Dish 