What Should We Be Worried About?

WHAT—ME WORRY?

J. CRAIG VENTER

Genomicist; cofounder & chairman, Synthetic Genomics, Inc.; founder & chairman, J. Craig Venter Institute; author, A Life Decoded

As a scientist, an optimist, an atheist, and an alpha male, I don’t worry. As a scientist I explore and seek understanding of the world(s) around me and in me. As an optimist I wake up each morning with a new start on all my endeavors, with hope and excitement. As an atheist I know I have only the time between my birth and my death to accomplish something meaningful. As an alpha male I believe I can, and I do, work to solve problems and change the world.

There are many problems confronting humanity, including supplying enough food, water, housing, medicine, and fuel for our ever expanding population. I firmly believe that only science can provide solutions for these challenges, but the adoption of these ideas will depend on the will of governments and individuals.

I’m somewhat of a Libertarian, in that I don’t want or need the government to dictate what I can or cannot do to guarantee my safety. For example, I ride motorcycles, sometimes at high speeds; I have full medical coverage and should not be required by the government to wear a helmet to avoid harming myself if I crash. I do wear a helmet, and full safety gear, because I choose to protect myself. Smoking is in a different category. Smoking is clearly harmful to health, and the best step smokers can take to change their medical outcomes is to quit smoking. If that were all there was to it, then the government shouldn’t regulate smoking unless it’s paying for the smokers’ health care. However, science has shown that secondhand smoke can have negative health consequences on individuals in the vicinity of a smoker. Therefore laws and rules to regulate where people can smoke are, in my view, not only reasonable but good for society as a whole.

It’s the same with vaccinations. One of the consequences of our ever expanding global population—particularly when coupled with poor public health, unclean water, and misuse of antibiotics—has been and will continue to be new emerging infections, including those from zoonotic outbreaks. Over the past several decades, we have seen the emergence of AIDS, SARS, West Nile, new flu strains, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In 2007, MRSA deaths in the United States surpassed HIV deaths. Infectious disease is now the second cause of death in the world, right behind heart disease and ahead of cancer. In 2011, in the U.S., there were twice as many deaths from antibiotic resistance as from automobile accidents.

There are many causes for the emergence of infectious diseases, but one significant factor is human behavior with regard to immunizations. The supposed link between immunizations and autism, which has been proved false, has led some parents to choose not to vaccinate their children, believing it to be a civil liberty issue akin to the choice of whether or not to wear a motorcycle helmet. But I contend that people who avoid immunizations are a major contributing factor to the reemergence and spread of infectious disease, in a way far more dangerous than secondhand smoke. Vaccines are the most effective means of preventing the spread of infectious diseases. There are no better examples than the elimination of polio and smallpox through mandatory vaccinations.

When new or old infectious agents such as viruses and bacteria infect the nonimmunized, genetic recombination can occur, creating new versions of such agents, which can then infect the population that was immunized against the existing strains. We see this occurring with almost every type of infectious pathogen, and—most troubling—we are seeing it here in our own industrialized, wealthy, educated country. There are pockets of outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough; the emergence in the Middle East of a novel disease-causing coronavirus; illness at Yosemite National Park caused by hantavirus; and the emergence in farm communities of a variant influenza virus (H3N2v) that spread from swine to people. Last year’s flu came earlier and was more virulent than in previous years; Boston declared a state of medical emergency because of the number of flu cases and deaths.

Avoidance of vaccination creates a public health hazard. It is not a civil liberty issue. The unvaccinated, coupled with antibiotic resistance and with the decrease in animal habitats (which promotes zoonotic transfer of disease-causing agents) together make for a potential disaster that could take humanity back to the pre-antibiotic era. I thought we learned these lessons after such global pandemics as the plague and the outbreak of 1918 flu that killed 3 percent of the world’s population, but clearly without modern science and medicine we will be destined to relive history.