Some media outlets pay too much attention to readership statistics; most pay at least some. And paying attention we were a week or so ago when a Bulletin story from September began driving thousands of views per day, even more traffic than when we first published it. Naturally, we debated: Should we produce more coverage on this apparently hot topic, self-spreading vaccines? And who was this interested audience anyway? The answer, as it turns out, was disappointing.
Anti-vaxxers were reading the story.
Self-spreading or self-disseminating vaccines are genetically engineered benign viruses that, instead of spreading disease, can spread the immunity conferred by a vaccine. As wild animals such as bats move in their environment, they could be employed to spread a vaccine that prevents them from getting sick with, say, Ebola. Sounds like a great way to stop emerging infectious diseases in their tracks, before they make the leap from animals to humans. But is it? Regular Bulletin readers will know that whether the issue is geoengineering or brain-computer interfaces or new nuclear weapons or some other emerging technology, we regularly ask this very question.
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