Swine Flu: What Next?

Swine influenza (also swine flu) is endemic to the pig population as well as humans. This is the recent outrage of an epidemic. Upon hearing it, a very innocent friend of mine said, “I’m glad I’m a vegetarian”. I had to educate the sweetheart that the disease doesn’t pick on non-vegetarians alone. The transmission is pretty much like normal flu. The symptoms of the latter resembles the former, making it difficult to identify.

Upon hearing the outburst of the disease, I couldn’t help but reminiscence a time when SARS coronavirus, sometimes shortened to SARS-CoV, the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) broke out three years back. The mayhem it caused and the fact that although science has advanced in unique ways up until cloning species, we’re dealing with diseases that have no cure or have not been dealt with in such seriousness before.

Image via Wikipedia

What about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as Mad-Cow Disease (MCD)? That epidemic sure had people going mad…fatally mad. At this point of time, I’d cut loose from my thought-realm and place a serious question to the “science-society”, are we failing miserably in a battle against diseases? Or are we doing something that’s provoking the birth of new epidemics? Can’t we shift focus to finding cures for diseases like cancer….for example, cancer detection and prevention is not exactly the same as cancer-cure, is it?

I know my thoughts would go against many people’s views. Why are movies like “I am Legend” and “Doomsday” spring up and make it big at the box office? Probably it’s because in the heart-of-heart, we all know that we could be looking at the stories (how very alike the base story is – an epidemic) head towards a glimpse of reality when new diseases hit the world…..

As pessimistic as the above may sound and as a person from the Science background, I must honestly say – Never underestimate the power of science and medicine. There’s no place for the word “impossible”, Hats off to all the scientists and researchers, but watch out and buckle up; there’s more to tackle…