From Virginia Strauss
Anders Sandberg of the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute feels that “If we think we are the only life in the universe, we have a huge responsibility to spread life to the stars” (2 May, p 37). He supposes our presence here has been for the planet’s long-term good – but has it?
Maybe any higher intelligence out there will, having watched the police series Z Cars and then the film Apocalypse Now beamed from Earth (2 May, p 36), deduce that they have a nasty little virus on their hands. Are our instincts for preserving ourselves and adopting new habitats any different from those of HIV?
Maybe our intelligence will be viewed from afar in the same way that we admire the mutational prowess of flu viruses. And maybe by the time they get to the film Blade Runner they will be devising some form of antiviral to launch at us.
West Moors, Dorset, UK
