By Kamlesh Tripathi
The Surgeon General of USA, Dr Vivek Murthy has reignited a public health debate by proposing cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages. Murthy’s proposal accompanied a new advisory, highlighting growing evidence, linking alcohol consumption to several types of cancer. Cigarettes have already been in that category for a long time now. I wonder what the liquor companies must be feeling about this warning.
The scientists and inventors might create something with a noble intention. But the depraved minds may commandeer it for minatory motives. Frankly speaking, inventions do leave an indelible legacy behind, where some may turn out to be serenades of life and some the hounding baggage, difficult to haul.
Scottish physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering penicillin. Penicillin was later developed as an antibiotic to kill bacteria. Since then it has saved many lives. Fleming therefore must have left the world with pleasant memories of his invention.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, a powerful explosive that caused significant destruction. He made a fortune from this invention. However, during his lifetime, he came to realise that dynamite posed a serious threat to humanity. In response, he later bequeathed his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize for Excellence.
Conversely, Eadweard Muybridge, often called the ‘father of the motion picture’ must have left the world with glorious recollections. But this isn’t the case with General Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creator of the AK-47 assault rifle, even though it was designed for the defence of his country. Kalashnikov was an author and a poet too. Later he rose to be a general with innovative attributes, but his inventions appear to be for the wrong causes. Kalashnikov maintained that his rifle was an ‘armament for defence and not a weapon of offence.’ Yet, numerous killings took place with his invention.
Kalashnikov claimed he was always motivated by service to the nation rather than money. But the rifle that was once good for the nation was used by terrorists in illegal and dreadful killings. In the final years of his life, he was saddened by the awry responsibility for the millions of deaths that his invention perpetrated. This was revealed in his published letter to the head of the Russian Church. Kalashnikov died at the age of 94. In his interviews, he insisted that he created the AK-47 assault rifle only to protect his country, and rejected the responsibility for killings perpetrated by zealots and terrorists using his invention.
Kalashnikov didn’t have a simple life. To find peace, like Alfred Nobel and Oppenheimer, Kalashnikov too retired to a quiet life in the hope of experiencing a godly touch sometime and somewhere before death.
Surely, inventions do leave a legacy behind. Some legacies are insurmountable for the soul to carry through. But sadly, the inventor only realises that when it’s too late in life.
The story remains deficient without knowing what Oppenheimer must have felt after the atomic bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did he feel exalted or miserable only he’d be able to tell? But of course, the sting of karma does follow you beyond the frontiers of your present life.
James Albert Bonsack invented the cigarette-rolling machine in 1880 for which he got an American patent in 1881. But how must he be feeling about his invention today? It is exactly not known who invented liquor, but the earliest evidence of alcohol dates back to around 7,000 BCE in China. Perhaps they were discovered accidentally by pre-agricultural cultures, so whom should we blame except for the present-day breweries or the consumers themselves? Clean air to breathe is a precious gift from Mother Earth, but it has been polluted by human activity. Polluted air too has become a killer like alcohol and cigarettes. So what must Mother Earth be thinking? And what is the essence of inventions vis-a-vis life? Should we stop researching inventions or manage inventions well? The same answer is to manage inventions well and teach moderation. Any habit in moderation is manageable—surely Dr Murthy must know that well enough. And for the inventors, one can’t even say that inventions should not be like the Brahmastra of Maharathi Ashwatthama of Mahabharata fame, who knew how to invoke the Brahmastra but did not know how to retract it because the folly of the invention is known much later and in many cases after the inventor has left the world.