A Flu from Hell to reduce human numbers

Would anyone be mad enough to kill billions, hoping to stave off the ecological and cultural collapse of nations, of continents, of whole societies? It seems despicable, mad - and quite plausible. Speculations along these lines have already been voiced by molecular biologists. A specialist in tropical diseases said to me, 'I think it's a terrifying possibility. I've met enough otherwise intelligent people who believe a mouse and a deer and a human baby are of equal moral stature. Why not kill one that's out of population balance, to save another?'

The more the North thinks of humanity as a malignancy, the more we will unconsciously long for disasters. Somewhere, sometime, some eco-activist may see a quite simple solution to the South's runaway growth and poverty: designer plague. An airborne form of, say, a super-influenza. The Flu from Hell, carried on a cough, with a several week incubation period, so the plague path will be hard to follow. Maybe fine-tuned, too, carrying a specific trait that confines it to tropical climes, like malaria. A handful of carriers would suffice to spread such a designer plague.

'You should hear the eco-warriors talk when there's no microphone around,' an industrial molecular biologist remarked to me. 'The only thing restraining them is the technical barriers.' Think of their rationalisations: Humanity as cancer. The deep ecology credo: All life is equally sacred. Look at the big picture. Why not save millions of species a year by trimming the numbers of a mere single species?

We in the comfy North forget that for the bulk of humanity diseases are kept at bay by a thin modernity in medicine, well water, and clean food. Yet across this globe a swift viral traffic flows. Influenza A which brings teary, aching fever to a hundred million of us yearly, is an old enemy, endlessly vigorous. It would make a handy weapon.