In year 2000 the Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote in a famous statement: “It’s our wits versus their genes”. The imbalance of powers in the fight against microbes is coming to light, as the Covid-19 infection is striking the world. Not by chance, Lederberg’s lament concluded a recent paper with the evocative title of “Escaping Pandora’s box: another novel Coronavirus”. Yet, are we entitled to use the whole of our minds, and therefore the technological knowhow and the economic resources to tamper with an epidemiological climax? These approaches appear reasonable, but they have prompted in recent years cyclical phases of panic and of unjustified fear, that strongly impacted on the economic and on the social systems. This led to a reactive rather than a proactive strategy piloting the resources towards the research of tailored measures aimed to produce acute responses to the crises. Nevertheless, this approach resulted, in the best case, in the production of vaccines and antiviral drugs whose use – although extremely welcome – may be effective only when an epidemic is already in place. Besides, these and standard public health measures commonly put into place in the case of an outbreak have not so far produced permanent solutions, aside from a few cases (e.g. SARS-CoV-2). [...]
Humankind versus Virus: Are we winning the battle but losing the war?
Cicero A.;Cremonesi A.;Romano P.;Sabba C.;
2020-01-01
Abstract
In year 2000 the Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote in a famous statement: “It’s our wits versus their genes”. The imbalance of powers in the fight against microbes is coming to light, as the Covid-19 infection is striking the world. Not by chance, Lederberg’s lament concluded a recent paper with the evocative title of “Escaping Pandora’s box: another novel Coronavirus”. Yet, are we entitled to use the whole of our minds, and therefore the technological knowhow and the economic resources to tamper with an epidemiological climax? These approaches appear reasonable, but they have prompted in recent years cyclical phases of panic and of unjustified fear, that strongly impacted on the economic and on the social systems. This led to a reactive rather than a proactive strategy piloting the resources towards the research of tailored measures aimed to produce acute responses to the crises. Nevertheless, this approach resulted, in the best case, in the production of vaccines and antiviral drugs whose use – although extremely welcome – may be effective only when an epidemic is already in place. Besides, these and standard public health measures commonly put into place in the case of an outbreak have not so far produced permanent solutions, aside from a few cases (e.g. SARS-CoV-2). [...]File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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