Sick At Home

I think this occasion warrants an extra long blog today. So what IS the flu shot all about? It's supposed to help PREVENT flus right? Today is proof that it doesn't work. You might say well, flu shots are for preventing flus by strains the doctors know about. Doesn't work if the bug is a new one. So much for being forward looking.

It is humbling to note though, while the human race can be forward looking in anything we have created for ourselves, we seem to be one step behind mother nature still. Oh, she allows us our small victories - Vegetable hybrids, cross breeding, vaccination shots, medical cures, even heart transplants... But when we try to mess around with nature's core chemistry, pandemonium breaks.

Take antibiotics for instance. While we pat ourselves on the back for this cure to the common cold, we're setting in motion a micro evolution of sorts where bugs get stronger while our bodies build resistance. Think SARS (See the Photoessay here) and the Avian Bird Flu. Mother Nature's telling us we really haven't won that one yet.

Take cloning in another instance. So how long has it been since Dolly was born? Or is it Dorothy? Oh wait - she's from the Wizard of Oz - so it's Dolly. So why hasn't there been a human version of Dolly? It would be interesting to see another Reagan or Hitler pop up in history - I'm sure sociologists would love to run tests on "child" hitlers. Put these Hitler "prodigies" under different cultivating environments and grow them with a moral conscience so that their influence can be used for global rejunvenation instead of massacre. Or how about bringing the "King" back from the dead? Wouldn't he be perfect with Marilyn Monroe No. 2? on a more personal level - miss your uncle danny or aunt flora? Just email your orders to www.dollylabs.com along with a fat cheque. While that idea sounds really cool, its actually quite unnerving. Think about it - while you're staring at a cloned loved one in the face - do you give uncle danny a hug? Take him out and introduce him to friends as being "back from the dead"?

So why aren't the above scenarios happening? Are we really such a morally ethical race that we have decided to put away our gene dabbling tools and throw cloning out of the window? Tough to answer when you read about wars in the Middle East and America's dealing with Iraq, isn't it? So what took out the fun in our genetic dabbling? Because once again, mother nature has us stumped (read Progress After Dolly). This universe took trillions of years to come into existence, and we now presume that based on 2 million years' existence we can contain and control this power in our laboratories with pipettes, microscopes and petridishes...

All this drama trying to decide if I should be taking antibiotics.