Personally, I was against the war in
Afghanistan from the beginning, because my general default position is that I oppose
all wars, because, in my opinion, all wars create the conditions for
more wars.
That was certainly the case in Afghanistan in the 1980s, where the
United States supported actively, some of the guys we are now fighting - including probably Osama bin Laden - who were then, as they were fighting our (then) enemy, the Soviets, were dubbed "freedom fighters."
Such is freedom.
As devastated as I was by the
oil terrorists who struck my favorite city in the world, New York, in September, 2001, I was sure right then that the response was an over-reaction, and a blind striking out. Knowing who the "President" at the time was, I knew that the response would be botched, and, of course, it was.
I happen to live in the area where the Anthrax attacks - which took place at the same time roughly as WTC - took place, and I was sure that that was a bunch of bull too, and, apparently it was.
And then there was the
Patriot Act, which was named, I guess, on the theory that patriotism is a form of stupidity. As I get older, I actually love my country more and more and more, but who was it that said something along the lines of "Patriotism is the first refuge of idiots?"
The Patriot Act did doodly squat for our country and the chief result of the act was to allow Dick Cheney to reduce his Viagra intake for a few years. The
damage of the act may prove incalculable. To wit:
Rebeca Rico-Hesse knew that she wanted to become a virologist from the age of 15, when her beloved horse was at risk of catching the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus then spreading through northern Mexico. Thirty-three years later, after decades of working on this and other potentially deadly pathogens, she talks to Nature about why she has now dropped the work. The reason: requirements to submit to a US Department of Justice background check to keep working in the highest-security labs at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas.
A number of scientists are pushing back against proposed additions to already-beefed-up biosecurity requirements (see 'Booming biosafety labs probed').
What viruses did you formerly work on?
I worked on arenaviruses, alphaviruses and flaviviruses. I stopped working on the first two in 2003.
Why?
Because of the Patriot Act . We have to register certain viruses as select agents. Any of us working on select agents had to go through the background check, filing our fingerprints. We even had to give a deposition to FBI agents. We had to go in and meet with three agents individually, with no lawyer present.
Initially, I told my biosafety officer and my supervisors that I took extreme offence to being treated as a criminal when I have dedicated my life to public health. So I refused. But one year later I went through the background check, because I was being treated like a pariah. My virus collection was taken away, and a padlock was put on one of the freezers in my lab....
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090930/full/news.2009.957.html">The link, which is free, speaks for itself.
Like I always say, "Ignorance kills." It does you know.
Ignorance kills.