{"id":96,"date":"2005-10-31T15:31:48","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T21:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=96"},"modified":"2005-11-04T00:05:23","modified_gmt":"2005-11-04T06:05:23","slug":"silver-flu-bullets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/id\/silver-flu-bullets\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver Flu Bullets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-\n\ndyn\/content\/article\/2005\/10\/25\/AR2005102501389.html\">Silver Flu Bullets<\/a> By Anne Applebaum<\/p>\n<p><strong>Americans and their leaders <\/p>\n<p>will have to get over their love affair with <em>intelligent design<\/em>.<\/strong> Polls show that most don&#8217;t believe in evolution. But <\/p>\n<p><strong>it is actually impossible to talk logically about bird flu, or any other rapidly evolving and constantly changing virus, without <\/p>\n<p>using the language of evolution<\/strong> &#8212; specific words such as &#8220;mutant,&#8221; &#8220;recombination,&#8221; &#8220;genome&#8221; and &#8220;selection.&#8221; Without that <\/p>\n<p>language, a sensible popular or political discussion, let alone a scientific discussion, is impossible: We&#8217;re stuck talking about the <\/p>\n<p>virus &#8220;jumping&#8221; from birds to humans, as if it were a magic bug with a mind of its own. We&#8217;re stuck thinking that a virus is a hex that <\/p>\n<p>can be lifted with a single lucky charm, not something that will change over time.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re also stuck with magic solutions: silver <\/p>\n<p>bullets, protective amulets, Tamiflu prescriptions. And until we are willing to elect the politicians, pay the businessmen, and support <\/p>\n<p>the scientists and science educators who can come up with something better, that, I&#8217;m afraid, is all the flu preparedness we&#8217;ll ever <\/p>\n<p>have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Silver Flu Bullets By Anne Applebaum Americans and their leaders will have to get over their love affair with intelligent design. Polls show that most don&#8217;t believe in evolution. But it is actually impossible to talk logically about bird flu, or any other rapidly evolving and constantly changing virus, without using the language of evolution &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/id\/silver-flu-bullets\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Silver Flu Bullets<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}