fear mongering and vaccines

so winter is almost upon us here in the northern hemisphere, and with it comes fear mongering of the pandemic flu threat. go! spend money for a vaccine you probably don't need! it may not even help!

pandemic flu is basically a new strain of influenza virus that usually mutates to be able to infect humans, and is usually world-wide and highly virulent. they've happened in the past (1918 spanish flu) and tend to have a high mortality rate. researchers have been warning of the very real possibility of a world-wide pandemic occurring within the next few years. the most likely candidate is H5N1 virus, or avian flu. so vaccines have been developed and marketed for the past few years. the problem in my mind is the fear-mongering tactics advertisers for these vaccines use. yes, the pandemic is kind of imminent. yes, it will be dangerous. but medicine has come so far since the last pandemic, and especially in this country it will have less of an impact. i would be much more concerned for people in other countries who don't have the medical resources we do - that is where the flu will hit hardest. besides, the best was to avoid such a pandemic would be to stay home for a few weeks - just not being in public places will reduce the disease's ability to spread.

another issue is fear mongering about the LACK of vaccines available. they were in such high demand that the pharmaceutical companies actually ran out and had to ration them the first few years. but since the pandemic hasn't hit, demand has gone down so fear mongering has gone up. not everyone needs these vaccines; they usually make the patient sick (flu-like symptoms...) and may not even be for the correct influenza strand. they're a good idea to protect the young and old, and probably people who work with the young and old, but otherwise they are a bit superfluous. but pharmaceutical companies gotta get by right?
i've actually worked on a project evolving pandemic flu. it was a presentation to pharmaceutical companies about how vaccines are distributed and advertised. eye-opening... i learned that big companies have been encouraged to offer the vaccines to their employees and families, even outside the health professions and not specified for the young and old. yet another thing to spend money on right?

so overall, having vaccines ready for the imminent pandemic is probably a good idea. but we should take advertising and fear mongering about it with a grain of salt.

conservation of species

i've recently started to work/volunteer/get credit for helping the US Geological Survey in their black-footed ferret conservation project. this is great work and giving me a wonderful connection with the organization, but has brought to my attention the conservation of species as an ethical issue. is it ethical for humans to interfere and save a species from extinction? even if it is not necessarily due to humans that the animal is headed towards extinction?

in my opinion, saving a species isn't really a bad thing. but because of the nature of evolution and natural selection, some species naturally evolve towards extinction. take the panda for example. humans have nothing to do with this animal's lack of sex drive. but they're big and cute and easy to raise money to save. as a small child i think someone gave me an "adopted panda" for my birthday.

another issue with saving a species from the brink has to do with genetic variation. 3 species in North America have been saved by capturing all remaining wild animals and breeding them captively - the red wolf, the California condor, and the black-footed ferret. the ferrets, for example, numbered 14 when they were removed from the wild, and though the population has been meticulously managed, inbreeding is unavoidable. so even though the actual current population is in the hundreds, the effective population (or the population of genetically dissimilar individuals that are breeding) is probably in the 20s somewhere. as another example; the entire population of cheetahs is so similar genetically, so recessive/homozygous, that they might as well be clones of each other.

in the case of the ferrets, humans definitely had an impact on their decline - habitat loss, systematic destruction of prey species (prairie dogs were viewed as pests) and plague arriving and spreading across the country were all because of the presence of humans.

so yes, i think saving species and maintaining as much biodiversity as we can (considering how much we have caused it to decline) is a good idea. mom always said i was a tree-hugger :)