Carpe Porcus

Seize the pork, or something close to that—as the nearest to Latin I have ever mastered was Pig Latin, which inadvertently makes too much sense in that statement.

The pork I am referring to, if you haven't had any mass media influx lately, Swine Flu. It is the latest round of pandemic potential influenza, getting every network fired and riled up with Chicken Little ferocity. As if we didn't have enough to worry about, as if there weren't enough things out there just waiting to take us to meet our own politic of worms, just pin the pig right on the top of it.

My initial thought is we are fairly screwed if a super-bug comes along. With the unknown damage vaccinations and processed food chemicals have wreaked, environmental toxins, bleaching and hand-sanitizing more than a obsessive compulsive germaphobe... I wonder if our immune systems are any better suited to handle a true outbreak than they were in 1890.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-vaccination by any means. I'm just not so certain that is the best tactic to fight some of these diseases. I liken it to computer viruses, you know they are out there, you take precautions to prevent infecting yourself by safe-surfing practices, and anti-virus software. The thing about anti-virus software though, is an exploit must be entered into the particular program's database in order for it to see it. You could have four different products running and still one Trojan horse could sneak past the wall. What would be more beneficial is if there was a method to create a super-immune system. Rather than taxing and compromising already bombarded immunities by giving it a little infection so it knows how to fight it, wouldn't it be better to train the machine to memorize what belongs, and eradicate immediately what doesn't? (Either that or as S.O. keeps telling me, we should all become Apples.)

It is amazing that science and technology have come so far, but is still swaddled in infancy. The more you know, the more you realize you don't know anything.