Project Part 5

Epidemic of Technology

        Epidemics have happened in the past; the Black Death, H1N1, and small pox. They have wiped out entire civilizations. We are predicting that one day there will be an epidemic that takes over the world. Bioterrorism is one of the major threats to our society because of technology today chemicals and disease can be spread very easily.  Someone could contract a disease anywhere in the world; get on an airplane without even knowing they have it and spread it to hundreds of more people in the airport and in the plane.  Those people will then travel around the world spreading it to everyone they come in contact with.  Before we know it thousands could become infected.  Technology poses a problem to this type of threat.  In the past only certain areas would become infected and it was mostly contained to one area or region.  Today it could spread around the world within a matter of hours. These types of disease can also be spread to animals such as birds, pigs, and cows.  When the virus spreads to animals it poses another threat to humans.  We eat these animals which can contain horrible disease.  Because disease can travel from animals to humans this meat could start in Wisconsin, such as H1N1 and spread everywhere the meat is shipped.  This is very hard to detect and before we know it, it will be too late.

In the result of an epidemic several things could happen.  It is safe to say that if a disease is released into our world through bioterrorism, we will not know it has until it has infected a mass of people.  The symptoms won’t be immediate and it will travel to hundreds if not thousands of people very quickly. Once this is discovered there will probably be a quarantine situation. Keep your children home from school, stay in your house don’t go anywhere so that you don’t get infected or infect others.  This poses some other questions.  Who would get immunizations?  Should children get them, should elderly get them, should the rich get them?  These are questions that will need to be answered at very short notice. When we figure that out, what would we do for the people who refuse to get an immunization? The government is planning for an epidemic and creating a project called Bioshield that is testing and finding treatments (Silverman 46).

 Many movies and books are predicting that we are going to come back to life and thrive off of eating human beings; there is one movie in particular is Last Man on Earth.  These ideas predict that we are going to use our medical technology to cure a disease that is going to mutate us. These movies could also pose a threat to society because everyone is waiting for the “zombie” infection; this could cause mass panic if there is something like small pox infecting people.  People will try to travel and leave the infected area, causing more people to be infected. Medical technology has helped us, but will it be a medical experiment that causes an epidemic?

Silverman , Ed. "The 5 Most Pressing Ethical Issues in Biotech Medicine." Biotechnology Healthcare. (20044): 46. Web. 10 Dec. 2012. <http://www.biotechnologyhealthcare.com/journal/fulltext/1/6/BH0106041.pdf?CFID=116723375&CFTOKEN=31647636>.

Project 4

Annotated Bibliography for Ethical Issues

Shapira, Shmuel, and Meir Oren. "Ethical Issues of Bioterror." Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. (2006): n. page. Web. 8 Dec. 2012. <http://www.terrormedicine.com/publications_files/EthicsBioterror.pdf>.

When bioterrorism is in effect and is threatening everyone’s lives, it is hard to be able to keep civil rights and liberties in place.  Vaccines are a major part to get rid of it, once they can study and create a vaccine; it will help stop the spreading and death mortality. People aren’t all just for getting vaccines, so this creates a dilemma. Quarantine is another way to keep a virus from spreading. Keeping from large gatherings to even curfews; telling people where they can go and where they can’t go is a big impact on our rights, but it is for our safety.  Where is it crossing the line, when they are telling us what we can and can’t do?

Wynia, Matthew, and Lawrence Gostin. "Ethical Challenges in Preparing for Bioterrorism: Barriers Within the Health Care System." Government, Politics, and Law. American Journal of Public Health, n.d. Web. 10 Dec 2012. <http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.94.7.1096>.

There are three responsibilities that happen in an epidemic; detection, containment and treatment.  These areas all have ways they can fail; detection wouldn’t work if people can’t get treatment if they don’t have access to healthcare. Containment could fail if the physicians don’t report the infectious disease.  Treatment could fail if physicians don’t help treat the infected patients.

Silverman , Ed. "The 5 Most Pressing Ethical Issues in Biotech Medicine." Biotechnology Healthcare. (20044): 46. Web. 10 Dec. 2012. <http://www.biotechnologyhealthcare.com/journal/fulltext/1/6/BH0106041.pdf?CFID=116723375&CFTOKEN=31647636>.

The government has a project called Bioshield; this project develop vaccines and treatments that would be able to be in mass quantities to help a large population. While this is a good idea for an “if” kind of situation, this project is going to take a huge chunk out of the health department budget. This would also take from other researching in the medical field like diseases; AIDS and HIV. While this bioterrorism MAY happen someday, we are dealing with these diseases today. 

Annotated Bibliography

DeNoon, Daniel. "Cold, Flu & Cough Health Center."WebMD. Brunilda Narzario, 1 2006. Web. 20 Oct 2012. Web. http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/features/disease-prevention-traveling.

Airplanes are a good way to spread all different kinds of things; viruses and diseases.  This is a technology that would play a bad part in a pandemic. Airplanes have already played a role in the SARS pandemic that happened a few years ago, “Within eight days, 20 passengers and two flight attendants would come down with SARS. Some of those who became infected were sitting as far as seven rows away from the man carrying the SARS virus. Five would die.”

Macrae, Fiona. "Terror Fear as Scientists DELIBERATELY Create 'Armageddon' Bird Flu Virus in Lab." Daily Mail. N.p., 21 2011. Web. 23 Oct 2012. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2076422/Bird-flu-scientists-DELIBERATELY-create-Armageddon-virus-lab.html>.

Scientists have the tendency to develop new strains of viruses that could be very harmful to our society.  Scientists already have made a super bird flu that could spread as fast as the winter cold.  This type of research could be helpful in the sense that they now know the different mutation; but this research could easily escape or be taken out of the lab.  Bioterrorism could occur and then this virus is creating a pandemic that kills off the human race.  

"Pandemic Market." Medicago Inc.. N.p.. Web. 21 Oct 2012. <http://www.medicago.com/English/Technologies/Vaccines/Pandemic-market/default.asp&xgt;.

Since more technology has been invented and science is getting more intelligent, the pandemics have had fewer deaths.  The technology is allowing us to figure out a way to kill off the virus faster, having less deaths. 

"Pandemic Flu History." n.pag. Flu.gov. Web. 24 Oct 2012. http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/index.html

Some potential pandemics have been saved by earlier studies that were made.  Being able to have this knowledge from the technology can help prevent even more pandemics.  There was a pandemic that had occurred in 1957-1958 that killed over 69,800 people in the United States; this could have been the fear at the time when the movie was being produced.  

Themes&Values

               Last Man on Earth is about this disease that spreads making people mindless, blood drinking, zombies.  People think that one day there will be an epidemic. Now a days, in the labs, scientists make a different strains of diseases so they can prepare to cure it.  If these get out, like the swine flu just recently, it could wipe out the nation if we don't have a cure for it.  Making these different kinds of strains to find cures, is that really helping us? Or is it putting us in risk?  Technology can either help us succeed, or can wipe out the entire human race.   "On June 11, 2009, WHO signaled that a global pandemic of 2009 H1N1 influenza was underway by further raising the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6." http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/cdcresponse.htm.

               Adaption. He found ways to keep the vampires out of his house.  He had to make tools to kill the vampires. He made his living by going into the town and finding new things to survive. He found a way to live even though the world around him was dead.

What Movie I Picked!

For our project I had chosen "The Last Man on Earth." It is pretty interesting, I didn't know back in the 1960's they believed a disease would spread and make everyone these like zombie vampires.