Viruses and Super Bugs: A Reasonable Solution

In the 18th century, in response to the plight of the starving and struggling Irish peasant farmers, the writer Jonathon Swift wrote a short essay called A Modest Proposal. In it he proposed that all poor Irish farmers sell their children to the rich as food, thereby cutting back on the numbers of mouths they had to feed and gaining some much needed capital. It is with this same community spirit in mind that I offer this reasonable solution.

Mad Cow. Bird Flu. West Nile. AIDS. Malaria. What do all these diseases have in common? Aside from the obvious of being either fatal or potentially fatal to humans, they have all originated in the animal kingdom. Mad cow comes from sheep bits being fed to cows (so it really should be called mad sheep but I guess it doesn’t have quite the same ring). Bird Flu is self-explanatory, while West Nile is transmitted by birds who have been stung by mosquitoes carrying the virus. AIDS is said to have originated in monkeys and Malaria is caused by the bite by another type of mosquito.

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding these diseases and the possible reasons for their outbreak. Some have linked ones like AIDS to a sort of divine retribution for doing something against the dictates of word of God. Mad Cow is a sign that man shouldn’t be screwing with animals by feeding vegetarian cows meat by-products like sheep brains.

Other people have theorized that our overuse of antibiotics has actually caused the generation of a wide variety of super bugs (not the mosquitoes, the viruses). The reasoning is that by using antibiotics needlessly it has enabled the viruses to develop new and stronger mutations that are resistant to our medicines.

Enabled is the wrong word of course because it makes it sound like the viruses had a choice in the matter and planned the whole thing. It’s probably more along the lines of natural selection where the ones who had the right abilities survived and became dominant.

Now of course fanatical eco warriors and warm-hearted care bear types have been going around saying all of these things are caused by our (humans that is) irresponsible relationship with nature. Listen to them bleat about how we need to find a balance between our needs and the needs of nature.

We have to learn how to share the planet or else this degradation of existence will continue to get worse and worse as the years go by. Share! Share the planet with a bunch of disease ridden, flea bitten varmints. I don’t think I want to share the planet with those idiots let alone a cow whose foaming at the mouth and should be tied up in a straight jacket. (I know that’s not what it means, what sort of yahoo do you think I am)

Look I’m a reasonable man and am willing to listen to any sort of reasonable solution to this problem, but I’m not prepared to sacrifice any of my family members to molly coddle some critters. These green people seem to think that nature is cute and cuddly. Do they know what happens in nature when an animal gets sick? It dies.

Look at a herd of deer for example. One of their member get sick none of the others are going to get all sentimental about it and try to nurse it back to health. Hell no, they’re going to stick it at the back of the pack so it can get picked off by the next passing wolf or coyote, thus preserving the well being of the rest of the herd.

No one has been able to come up with a solution to the problem of all these outbreaks of viruses and illnesses. They keep talking about coming up with new vaccines and antibiotics to either prevent you from catching it or to help you fight it off. But how effective is that going to be?

Those viruses have already proven they can fight back and mutate faster than we can create a new serum to defend against them. With that in mind, I’d like to offer what I consider a reasonable solution; one that’s sure to solve the problem, and not leave us any worries about new stronger bugs coming back to latter: Kill all the problem species.

I know that sounds like a lot of work but think of the benefits aside from eliminating disease. Look at all the third world people we can give jobs to, by having them hunt down all the monkeys. That’s going to be a real boost to those economies with people having money to spend for at least one generation.

The Brits have already proved that it no big deal to eliminate domestic cattle, so that won’t be a problem. The same goes for the sheep; they’re so dumb anyway they won’t even notice the difference.

Now I know what you’re going to say, what about the birds and the mosquitoes, isn’t that going to be kind of difficult to round them up and kill them all? Well I’ve thought that out too: mass spraying with DDT. We used to use it all the time until some weenies chickened out because it was causing birds to become extinct. Something about the shell on their eggs getting too thin and so news ones weren’t getting born.

So you see the beauty of it now don’t you? Not only do we get rid of the mosquitoes that cause diseases, we get rid of the birds at the same time, without having to actually go out and hunt them down. I know it’s not a perfect solution; it may take a couple of generations to actually eliminate all of the birds, but I haven’t heard anyone offer another one yet.

Oh sure some folk will bitch and complain, but some folk aren’t happy unless they got shit to whine about. Be reasonable, what’s more important; the health of your loved ones or the lives of some animals and insects? I for one have no trouble answering that question.

RJ