THE BLACK DEATH

If somebody asked you "Choose an area of health research that should no longer be pursued and provide reasons why?", what would be your answer?

I have thought about this question for a long time and the proper answer for it, and this is what I have concluded.

There is no research that should no longer be pursued. Every field is important and continuous research is essential to lead to new discoveries. There could be, however, some researches that are not contributing significantly to human kind health. The need to conduct research on disease varies since some are more harmful than others and more threatening to human kind. Others, on the other hand, are not as dangerous given that there is either a successful cure or an effective vaccine.

For instance, the Black Death was a fatal disease that killed more than 25 million people around the 14th century. Its virus attacks the host cell and pumps toxins into the cell, causing destruction to this cell. However, cases of the disease now are rare and can be treated. The Black Death does not pose any threat today, and there is only a limited amount of cases that are being documented each year and these are not deadly. In the United States, for instance, only an average of 12 cases occur each year. Conversely, this disease could be extremely dangerous if we made a mistake while handling it. According to Matthew Nilles, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology from University of Massachusetts Medical School, "if the virus (yersinia pestis) were acquired by the wrong people, the Black Death could have devastating results. The virus has resurfaced as a concern in recent weeks because of its potential to be used as weapon of biological warfare. If someone intentionally released the virus, it would inflict mass casualties and overwhelm our health care system". Nilles also concludes that if any mistake took place inside the labs that contains the disease, the virus could escape. In case such an incident occurs, the virus would spread very quickly around the world. Moreover, miss-handling the virus could form a new type of mutation and therefore, the virus may become stronger than before. A recent incident occurred in Australia when a few Australian scientists accidentally created a new deadly mouse virus. This virus had the ability to destroy the immune system and killed all the mice involved.

Keeping such prospects in mind and considering the huge funding that are consumed simply in maintaining a research on such a virus, it might be wiser to divert the research of a virus such the (yersinia pestis) to its less dangerous cousins like HIV. As an alternative, this financial support can go to other important diseases such as cancer and even malaria which cause millions of deaths.

Every research is valuable to the progress of humanity, yet the importance of each research varies as a few are better to be discontinued. Even with negative encounters occurring from a certain research, the experience and the knowledge gained from the research might still be valuable. Progress in each field affects the progress of others; thus, science is ever connected.