DEEP ECOLOGY PREVENTS US FROM FIGHTING VIRII LIKE HIV AND SMALLPOX OUT OF RESPECT FOR VIRAL AUTONOMY

Grey 93
William, Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia, Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology, Australian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 71, no 4, 1993, www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, acc 9-30-04 There are a number of problems with such a permissive criterion of moral considerability. One is that there are conflicts of interest between goal-directed entities, and something needs to be said about how these are to be resolved. Smallpox and HIV no doubt have their own viral autonomy (as well as being the products of natural historical processes), but for all that it is perfectly legitimate to disregard their interests when they conflict with our own. Yet it is hard to see how a decision to deny them a place in the scheme of things can be defended except by appeal to a value system which favours human interests. Plumwood allows that in casting the moral net widely we will have to "make distinctions for appropriate treatment within each class of items" (p. 147). It seems reasonable to suspect that human standards of appropriateness will be brought to bear to settle cases where such conflicts arise.

NEW WAVE OF SUPER VIRII LIKE AIDS WILL USE HUMAN TRAVEL TO CAUSE EXTINCTION Leibovich 97
Lori, staff, X stands for eXtinction: Interview with Frank Ryan, M.D., a prominent physician, Salon, Newsreal, March 1997, www.salon.com/march97/news/news2970321.html, Acc 9-30-04 And "Virus X" is one of them? What is "Virus X"? The title of my book, "Virus X," means a virus that threatens human extinction. The X stands for "eXtinction." I should add that most of the book is devoted to less terrible, scary but interesting, scenarios. But it would be foolish not to face the worst-case scenario, which I discuss in the book. There were fears that AIDS might fit that description. Is it because of international transportation and ease of travel that these viruses have become so threatening? Yes. Human behavior has greatly changed the natural goal posts with regard to the threat of new plague viruses. Take AIDS, for example. According to my hypothesis, in the past a band of hunters might have been bitten or scratched by chimpanzees harboring the virus; the result would have been a lethal attack localized to the hunter band -- or at worst their home village. Today, thanks to the global village, a new plague virus could perambulate the globe at the speed of a passenger jet. Then a new step in the plague scenario would take place in the massively populated cities -- they would become viral "amplification zones."