Well I must say that I never thought I would learn so much about different viruses! The only thing I read that I disagree with was on page 142 on HIV. It reads as follows: ³although a few, scattered individuals have remained healthy for ten to fifteen years or more despite infection with HIV, to date not a single spontaneous cure of HIV infection has been confirmed. Those infected have either died eventually or have remained continually infected, waiting to die.² While it is true that there is no known cure for HIV, and that no one who has it just gets better, it has become commonplace nowadays for an individual to have HIV but to remain healthy, with the virus, for years and years. In fact in my Sociology class we were just discussing how having HIV is still definitely a horrible disease but it isnıt a sentance to a slow death. The drugs that were once only for the rich, that strengthen the immune system, now are available to almost anyone who needs them.

My own uncle, Noah, has had HIV since the early 80ıs, and although he had to undergo a lot of what was considered ³experimental therapy² back then, the treatments he recieved have been effective and so far he has lived a healthy life.

Unfortunately, the virus is so new that it canıt be said definitively what the effects will be 40 or 50 years down the line, but it seems that the outlook is good. Iıll give a URL at the end of this paper that has more information.

Weıve discussed in class wheather it is right to eradicate a disease, like smallpox, that threatens the human race as a whole. Before reading this book I would have said no, because it seems like having no more natural adversaries would give us no reason to evolve. However, now that Iıve finished the book, Iıve kinda decided who cares? Does it matter if we stop evolving if we have evolved so far that we can handle any threat that comes our way? We could either eradicate smallpox and have billions of people left on the planet, or we can let it wipe out most of us, and weıll have not many people left. While this would certainly help the issue of overpopulation, I think there are more ethical ways to deal with that, such as limiting the number of children couples are allowed to have.