It was Bird then cow and now it is Swine. I dont know if there is any relationship between the animals and the ones in the Chinese calendar.A team of scientists dug up data about the last four flu pandemics. Their analysis, recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, shows that the swine flu pandemic has already fulfilled one of the conditions — it is caused by a new variant of the flu virus family.
Man has tampered too much with ecological pyramid and there seems to be a catching up game between man and science. Man would not have to deal with all this if he didnt create hybrid polutry and dairy varieties, everytime there is break through there is a new disease in the town.
Can anyone win over nature?
Man has tampered too much with ecological pyramid... a catching up game between man and science.... if he didnt create hybrid polutry and dairy varieties,...Can anyone win over nature?
ReplyDeleteThe sentiment is justified, but not beyond deeper probing. Is this nascent wish to go back to a pristine state of nature justified? When death rates were lowered and life expectancy at birth significantly improved (again by science), what of the burden that the Earth bears in terms of more mouths to feed? Land is limited. If it weren't for the phenomenal per hectare increase in food production life would have been nasty, brutish and short, more so in India than anywhere else in the world. And with meat eating being equated with prosperity and guided by the local climate and other factors, for most of the world, was an attempt to meet this aspiration wrong?
Perhaps we too easily put the blame at the door of science. Alternately this Flu, like many before it can be taken as just another important lesson to learn. Yes, Ecology is a radical science, because it a system science...urges us to see the interconnectedness of all things. So unlike the linear, mechanical thinking of Newtonian science that guided the heyday of the many great inventions and solutions that you and I enjoy the benefits of, and sometimes bear the brunt of too.
But the power rests in human hands to apply to the use of science. Awareness raising on diets and the real character of food, and policy to shape ethical meat processing and consumption (ethical...meat...er)should do the trick...hope even in despair :)
Its not so much about winner over nature either...just a pragmatic symbiosis. Nature is our resource base whether we like it or not...source and sink. An ethically informed intelligence in this interaction is what our challenging times cry out for...
ReplyDeleteDo read Kuhn on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, E. Schmachers Small is Beautiful and Natural Capitalism by Amory and Hunter Lovins and enjoy the churning that will come with it!