Today, I came back from a village visit in my hometown, having acquired more knowledge than many books and many lectures taught me in my university years. I will keep most of those to myself, but share an intruguing piece of news in the field of infectous diseases to illustrate why it is an abruptly bad idea to temper the cycles of nature, just like Planktos have tried before and will try again.

Here is the story that helped me experience a paradigm shift about tempering the cycles of nature.

Back in January 2006, the world got crazy about avian flu, a contagious disease that has reincarnated from its grave in every ten year for the last 50 years. Turkey was one of the hotspots for the disease. Although the death toll was at the same magnitude of people dying after accidentally falling over their balconies, the fear factor erased the minor conscious portion of the decision makers and soon, a mass slaughter of poultry was in place. In a few weeks, hundreds of millions of chicken and roosters were burnt in farms and villages. No chicken, no avian flu. Risk-free solution.

One of the most interesting facts is that, some poultry animals (let’s call them chickens from now on to avoid sounding like a farming lab blog) are naturally immune to some of the most poisonous fluids found in scorpions, snakes and, yes, ticks. As per their natural immunity, chickens were able to eat these small animals without getting poisoned from their venom. In a typical meal of a chicken, a combination of ticks almost always found their role.

Fast-forward to late-2007 and these ticks, with no chickens to feed, was left alone to expand and populate. With them, came Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), That illness took more lives in Turkey than Avian Flu did in the whole world in the last 18 months.

The very interesting point in this story was that, the folks in the village I visited seemed to know this natural relationship and feedback loop all along the way. Apparently, the science and public management community didn’t know that much.

Building on that, I have a word or two for the company named Planktos, which is trying to reincarnate in these days. They call their efforts under the "ecorestoration" and they hope to fill massive areas of oceans with planktons, in an effort to have them process way much more carbondioxide and reduce the current levels. A good intention coupled with a very risky execution. With no villagers living under the ocean, it will be even harder to learn from experience what effects such a bold move can ignite.

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