KILL a butterfly, and you are a villain; kill a cockroach, and you are considered a hero, Friedrich Nietzsche reportedly said. This rightly points out that morality has its own aesthetics. Pour some emotion into the mix, and we have quite a viscous concoction.

An editorial in Dawn recently pointed out the dire circumstances of rising rabies cases across the country, affecting rural and urban areas alike. Louis Pasteur invented the vaccine for rabies, caused mainly by rabid dog bites, in 1885. He was testing the vaccine for dogs when a nine-year-old boy from Alsace was mauled by a rabid dog. His mother begged Pasteur to save her dying son by administering the vaccine that had, till then, only been tested on dogs and rabbits. Dr Jacques Grancher, a clinician, played no small part in convincing the lab scientist to do the mother’s bidding. For 10 days, the boy received 12 doses of the vaccine daily. The boy survived.

During this summer’s floods, a young volunteer, Hamid Ismail, was bitten by a dog while delivering relief aid. Leave aside what that brave man went through, one does not wish anyone to see the videos from his hospital bed. Even his survival, thanks to a very dedicated team of doctors at a military hospital, was turned into a........

© Dawn