Craig
Venter plantea un tema preocupante -en
su respuesta a la pregunta What should we
be worried about?, para este año 2013, de la revista Edge (http://www.edge.org/annual-question).
Su pregunta es si puede permitirse que, basándose en una opción personal y, por
lo tanto en la liberdad individual, determinadas personas opten por no vacunar
a sus hijos o no vacunarse ellos mismos, para evitar el contraer ciertas
enfermedades. Craig Venter compara la opción de un motorista o un ciclista de
no ponerse el casco, caso en el cual no se pone en peligro la salud ni la vida
de los demás, con la decisión de no vacunarse contra determinadas enfermedades
infecciosas. El artículo nos sirve para profundizar en el concepto de libertad,
concretamente en el de la libertad externa o civil. Este es un tema presente
siempre en la Filosofía política y que trató de resolver, entre otros, J.
Stuart Mill. Este autor proponía como fórmula para resolver el problema de los
límites de la libertad personal el de las consecuencias negativas para los
demás que se deriven de nuestras acciones.
What—Me Worry?
As a scientist, an optimist, an
atheist and an alpha male I don't worry. As a scientist I explore and seek
understanding of the world (s) around me and in me. As an optimist I wake up
each morning with a new start on all my endeavors with hope and excitement. As
an atheist I know I only have the time between my birth and my death to
accomplish something meaningful. As an alpha male I believe I can and do work
to solve problems and change the world.
There are many problems confronting
humanity including providing enough food, water, housing, medicine and fuel for
our ever-expanding population. I firmly believe that only science can provide
solutions for these challenges, but the adoption of these ideas will depend on
the will of governments and individuals.
I am somewhat of a Libertarian in
that I do not want nor need the government to dictate what I can or cannot do
in order to guarantee my safety. For example I ride motorcycles, sometimes at
high speeds; I have full medical coverage and should not be required by the
government to wear a helmet to avoid doing harm to myself if I crash. I
actually do wear a helmet, as well as full safety gear, because I choose to
protect myself. Smoking is in a different category. Smoking is clearly
deleterious to one's health and the single event that a smoker can do to change
their medical outcomes is to quit smoking. If that is all there was to it, then
the government should not regulate smoking unless it is paying for the health
care of the smokers. However, science has clearly shown that second hand smoke
can have negative health consequences on individuals in the vicinity of the
smoker. Therefore laws and rules to regulate where people can smoke are in my
view not only reasonable but are good for society as a whole.
It's the same with vaccinations. One
of the consequences of our ever-expanding, global population particularly when
coupled with poor public health, unclean water and misuse of antibiotics, has
and will be new emerging infections including those from emerging zoonotic
outbreaks. Over the past several decades we have seen the emergence of AIDS,
SARS, West Nile, new flu strains and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus (MRSA). In 2007 MRSA deaths in the USA surpassed HIV deaths. Infectious
disease is now the second cause of death in the world right behind heart
disease and ahead of cancer. Last year in the US, there were twice as many
deaths from antibiotic resistance than from automobile accidents.
There are many causes for the
emergence of infectious diseases but one significant factor is human behavior
when it comes to immunizations. The scientifically-proven, false link between
immunizations and autism has led to some parents choosing not to vaccinate
their children, believing this to be a civil liberty issue akin to the choice
to wear a motorcycle helmet. However, I contend that individuals who avoid
immunizations are a major contributing factor to the reemergence and spread of
infectious disease in a way that is far more dangerous than second hand smoke.
Vaccines are the most effective means of prevention the spread of infectious
diseases. There are no better examples than the elimination of polio and small
pox through mandatory vaccinations.
When new or old infectious agents
such as viruses and bacteria can infect the non-immunized, genetic
recombination can occur to create new versions of disease agents that can now
infect the population that had been immunized against the existing strains. We
see this occurring with almost every type of infectious pathogen and most
troubling we are seeing it here in our own industrialized, wealthy, educated
country. There are pockets of outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough, the
emergence in the Middle East of a novel disease-causing coronavirus; illness at
Yosemite National Park caused by Hantavirus; and the emergence in farm
communities of a variant influenza virus (H3N2v) that spread from swine to people.
This year's flu has come earlier and appears more virulent than in previous
years. Boston has recently declared a state of medical emergency because of the
number of flu cases and deaths.
Avoidance of vaccination creates a
public health hazard. It is not a civil liberty issue. The un-vaccinated
coupled with antibiotic resistance and decreased animal habitats promoting
zoonotic transfer of disease causing agents is a potential disaster that could
take humanity back to the pre-antibiotic era. I thought we learned these
lessons after global pandemics such as the Plague and the outbreak of 1918 flu
that killed 3% of the population, but clearly without modern science and
medicine we will be destined to relive history.
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