re: evolved viruses
Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Wed, 17 Sep 97 15:24:29 CST
Pat Fallon wrote:
I don't see how Elizer can "target" cocaine supplies with his new
virus, without violating individual/property rights, even if he
develop it in his basement with his own funds. Unless he intends to
unleash it only in his own house.
Rick Knight responds:
Individuals can only decide what they individually want regarding what
they *think* and do in privacy or with another consenting person.
Once you step out the door and into a community, you become part of it
and are, to a degree, subject to it.
Granted, the way we've clumsily designed democracy, set against our
do-or-die market economy, isn't ideal for the more robust of the
iconoclastic set.
As far as I'm concerned, cocaine debilitates my community,
reverberating through it with toxic effect and picking off the
contribution of individuals and disempowering those closest to them
who feel helpless to assist the addict. SAME WITH TOBACCO. SAME WITH
ALCOHOL.
Individual property rights (as long as we're so intent on "owning"
stuff, particularly land!) do not outweight in importance a
substantiated threat to a community.
However, introducing viruses into crops from which addictive drugs are
made is not the ultimate solution. BUT it is a way for the nanny to
wean the child from the pacifier. And, unfortunately, many humans
fare little better than sheep as far as individual act or thought.
The gene pool is a funny thing...
Rick