Pathogens change! Can we? Letter to WPost not printed.

 

Dear Editor, (sent 24th)

Tuesday’s Health section article [Jan 23rd] “Scientists fear potent avian flu could jump to humans” should have been front page, top of the fold news.  Until AI becomes sentient pathogens will remain humanity’s greatest threat.  The evolution of the Avian H5N1 virus, now causing massive die-offs in bird populations and some mammal species, will continue.  COVID19 and HIV/AIDS are both still evolving.  Any virus can mutate into a global pandemic equal to or greater than the 1918 virus that emerged from a viral exchange in a Kansas farm killing over 50 million worldwide and 670,000 in the US when our population was one third of today’s. 

These and other biosecurity threats will only accelerate given our unprecedented scientific capacity for bioweapons development and ‘gain in function research’ accidents that will occur as we try to find preventive vaccines and treatments for bioweapons plus the viral attacks nature will throw at us as we increasingly encroach into its remote areas, pollute the world with thousands of mutinogenic chemicals and nano plastics with their yet unknow impacts, while ignoring the basic nutrition, sanitation, and health care needs of nearly a billion of the world’s poor, and millions suffering in the chaos of expanding wars. 

To the degree our species ignores the fact that nature and the immune systems of all higher life forms are the most complicated and complex systems in the known universe-  and must be protected – is the degree to which humanities capacity to survive and thrive is increasingly limited.   Add sentient AI to this mix and all we can do is pray that it eventually takes our side in this evolutionary battle.

Pathogen’s change!  Can we?