I have been asked to investigate and find a formula, which shows patterns of disease. This disease is spreading every day inside this room. The person who is carrying the disease has a contagious disease which means it will spread throughout this room. There are three cases of this disease, which I have been asked to investigate. The disease can be passed only in straight lines (up, down. left, right). The disease spreads one square away from the already infected one. These diagrams below show how the disease is spreading.
The 1st case The first case I have been asked to see is where one person is standing in the centre of the room. This person is infected. On day one this person is the only one infected but as the days go on it will spread in all directions. The 2nd case The second case I am investigating is when another person is standing up against one of the walls in the room. This means that the disease will spread differently then the 1st case. It also means that the disease can spread in three directions to start with.
The 3rd case The 3rd case is where the contagious person is in the corner and the disease spreads out into the room. This time the disease can only spread in two ways to start with. Diagrams and Results: I have recorded the spreading plague for 6 days. Then I will make a prediction for day 7. These diagrams show the disease spreading each Day. The fist set of diagrams, the plague starts from the centre. The process of maintaining pathogenic cultures has conjured up a variety of views which will be discussed in this essay. From this statement we can infer that having pathogenic organisms is a risk; however it is a worthy one. Nevertheless, depending on the view which someone takes, there are beneficial and negative aspects of carrying out this process.
Maintaining pathogenic micro organisms helps scientists in laboratories to produce drugs and antidotes to cure or fight against disease which pathogenic creatures cause. In laboratories they have research tools that speed up vaccine development which can eventually lead to the start of a preventive vaccine against disease. (1)Once such an example is the respiratory disease SARS. The disease killed hundreds of people around the world before it was brought under control in 2003 with aggressive conventional public health measures. Now public laboratories in America are beginning to issue the first vaccination so that SARS will not be caught in the later life of the recipient. Therefore it is important for laboratories to breed pathogenic creatures so that cures and vaccinations can be created to save the lives in case of a possible epidemic (2).
Further more laboratories are able to identify different diseases, some of which may not have been recognised before and therefore their discovery could be vital in saving lives. Recently a newly discovered disease has been found in a public laboratory: “New Haven corona virus”. The virus is one of the numerous corona viruses, most of which infect animals. In humans, corona viruses have been known primarily for causing colds. The discovery of diseases such as this help aid the knowledge of many aspects of science. For instance, by identifying the particular pathogen vaccinations and antibiotics can be produced so that the disease can be destroyed or limited in its production (3).
However, an alternative view is the dangers of cultivating pathogenic organisms within a public space. Many people believe safety of the public is more important than the potential benefits of finding cures to diseases (3). In addition, the public are at risk from being contaminated whenever there are dangerous diseases and viruses in an area nearby. There is always a risk of an outbreak occurring, creating danger many people in the surrounding areas.
A laboratory technician working for China’s national disease control and prevention centre has been blamed for the recent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) earlier this year (4). This resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands more who suffered from the virus (4). This is a prime example of the devastating effects which a mistake in a laboratory could bring. (6) Therefore, it is obvious that the dangers could conceivably occur if the proper safety action was not carried through in the proper manner, and for people who have families this would be too much of a risk if death is a possibility.
Some cultures could be extremely contagious and unknown to scientists and the medical world. Therefore, the event of an unknown disease venturing out into the public could cause a wipe-out because no cure or vaccination has been prepared against it. For instance, hundreds of years ago (1330s) the Black Death (Bubonic plague) killed thousands of people in England. The doctors had no answer to the problem and powerless to stop the disease (5). Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly. The occurrences of diseases capable of such devastation like this could be a real possibility which should be taken seriously and therefore must be appreciated as a concern against having public laboratories if death is a possibility.
In conclusion, there are both benefits and shortcoming in having public laboratories. However, it is important to understand that without them, people could possibly be in more danger than actually having a laboratory near them in a first place. This is because pathogenic micro organisms need to be researched thoroughly so that they can be treated against in the future. As a result, by eradicating research centres we are therefore reducing the chances of creating a cure. Although this is true, the concerns of the public can be easily understood because no one wants them or their family to be at risk of unnecessary disease and could therefore possibly pose as too much of a risk to their health.
Bibliography
1. The website:http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/immunization.html
2. The website: http://www.news-medical.net
3. The book: The Family Medical Reference Book, Author Philip Evans page208, publisher Little Brown
4. The leaflet: Reasons for the SARS epidemic written by Martin Blooms publisher Penguin