I preface this post by saying that I'm not a psychiatrist, psychologist, neurologist, or anything other than a person with mental illness who has studied the brain for his own benefit. Any readers who are, feel free to comment.
The swine flu scare is just another example of how the human limbic system makes people into idiots.
The so-called reptile brain governs the human "fight or flight" response, and several other instincts that during the pretechnological era were essential to keep us from winding up inside a predator. Now, of course, we have guns, planes and cars, and don't need it, but evolution hasn't caught up with this yet.
What this has to do with the swine flu is an example of risk analysis. Intelligent beings fear what is new, what is unexpected, what they know little about, etc. Heidi Lum's letter in the May 25 issue mentioned the AIDS problem. While its true that, whereas the swine flu virus, while affecting people not usually infected by seasonal flu, seems to be no deadlier than seasonal flu, HIV and AIDS continue to infect and kill millions, HIV, pardon me for saying this, is old news, and just doesn't scare people like it used to now that, even though we can't yet cure it, we can treat it and prevent new cases.
Meanwhile, the last "pandemic", avian flu, managed to get at least one indy horror film based on it, "Flu Birds". This is ridiculous, but it goes to show you just how dominant the limbic system is in the human brain.
Aaron J. Davis









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