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>.