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joi, 4 iunie 2015

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Dacă este adevărat că românii nu stau tocmai rău în ce priveşte invenţiile, în privinţa neinvenţiilor (distructive) stau atât de bine încât poate că ar fi timpul să primească un Nobel doar pentru asta.
Pentru că nu au inventat şi aplicat DDT. Pentru demonstrarea efectului său ca pesticid, elveţianul Paul Hermann Muller a primit premiul Nobel în 1948. Numai că mai târziu s-a văzut că DDT “produced fertility and neurological problems in humans and accumulated up the food chain in wildlife, poisoning birds. Use of the compound plummeted, and in 1972, DDT was banned in the U.S. entirely” (http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991847,00.html).
Pentru că nu au inventat şi propus lobotomia ca metodă terapeutică, precum elveţianul Hess şi portughezul Egas Moniz, care au primit Nobelul pentru asta în 1949.
Pentru că nu au inventat dinamita, în primul rând. De asta s-a ocupat Alfred Nobel, creatorul premiului Nobel. Cel căruia lumea îi datorează, nu atât pentru dinamită cât pentru dispozitivele de declanşare a explozibilelor, majoritatea posibilităţilor de a ucide cât mai mulţi oameni într-un timp cât mai scurt. Precum şi un premiu pentru pace, desigur, pe care-l oferim celor care ştiu să spună cât mai convingător „God have mercy on us all” în timp ce apasă butonul ăla care ne expediază brusc pe lumea cealaltă, doar ca să ne convingem în sfârşit de mila lui Dumnezeu. Ca atunci când i l-au acordat lui Andrei Saharov în 1975:

Now imagine this: A man creates a hydrogen bomb for a paranoid Soviet Union, makes sure it will work, and then wins a Nobel Peace Prize! This real-life character, worthy of a story by Kilgore Trout, was the late physicist Andrei Sakharov.
He won his Nobel in 1975 for demanding a halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. He, of course, had already tested his. His wife was a pediatrician! What sort of person could perfect a hydrogen bomb while married to a child-care specialist? What sort of physician would stay with a mate that cracked?
"Anything interesting happen at work today, Honeybunch?"
"Yes. My bomb is going to work just great. And how are you doing with that kid with chicken pox? "
Andrei Sakharov was a sort of saint in 1975, a sort that is no longer celebrated, now that the Cold War is over. He was a dissident in the Soviet Union. He called for an end to the development and testing of nuclear weapons, and also for more freedoms for his people. He was kicked out of the USSR's Academy of Sciences. He was exiled from Moscow to a whistlestop on the permafrost.
He was not allowed to go to Oslo to receive his Peace Prize. His pediatrician wife, Elena Bonner, accepted it for him there. But isn't it time for us to ask now if she, or any pediatrician or healer, wasn't more deserving of a Peace Prize than anyone who had a hand in creating an Hbomb for any kind of government anywhere?
Human rights? What could be more indifferent to the rights of any form of life than an Hbomb?
Sakharov was in June of 1987 awarded an honorary doctorate by Staten Island College in New York City. Once again his government wouldn't let him accept in person. So I was asked to do that for him.
All I had to do was deliver a message he had sent. This was it: "Don't give up on nuclear energy." I spoke it like a robot.
I was so polite! But this was one year after this crazy planet's most deadly nuclear calamity so far, at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Children all over northern Europe will be sickened or worse for years to come by that release of radiation. Plenty of work for pediatricians!”
(Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake, Berkley, 1998, pp. 5-6; pentru versiunea română, vezi Cutremur de timp, Humanitas, 2009, trad. Viorica Boitor, pp. 20-22).