Global Cancer: End of the World Takes One Big Wrong Thing

Recently, America lost two leading journalists. The first was Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet The Press"; he died of heart attack. Tony Snow was the other famous journalist; his life was snuffed out by cancer.

Cancer. "Approximately 1500 people die each day in the United States due to cancer. About 3,400 people are diagnosed with cancer each day in the U.S.", this according to about.com.
The thing about cancer is that other parts of the victim's body can look great. Mr. Snow really looked strong, and he remained intelligent and articulate. Yet he's gone.

Let's say a patient has lung cancer. Other organs, systems and parts of the patient's body like his heart, brain, pancreas, kidneys, liver, arms and legs can look good and remain functional. Yet if the cancer keeps eating away at those lungs, they will eventually shut down, and the whole person, still equipped with all those other good body parts, will drop dead. So the person dies with just one important body organ failing and falling to cancer in a comparatively minute part of the human body.

Now, compare humankind to that human body with cancer in one important part. Just one malfunction in our system has the potential to shut down life on earth as we know it. The malfunction could occur in our ecosystem, in the climate, in science and technology, in medicine, in weaponry, or it could be set off by the volatile world of extremist religionists.

The cancer analogy means that no situation needs to take over the whole of Planet Earth in order to shut down humanity's homeland. The harm has only to attack and take down just one important function of Earth's life support system... And down we'll go, like a seemingly strong person killed by cancer in just one sector of her body.

No one can predict what this global cancer will be or where it will come from. But the fact that we admit to being an imperfect species in an imperfect world may hint at the possibility that one of our many flaws or a flaw within our environment may someday do us in. Or it could just be a manufactured imperfection or flaw that may bring human civilization to its knees and to an irreversible halt.Is this a doom and gloom view of our collective future? Perhaps. But to dismiss it and live oblivious to this possibility may be wishful thinking, if not an ostrich-like existence on our part.