Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form . Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification. We are entering an era when biopolitics will matter more than ever. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination campaigns in Hong Kong and around the globe signal a distrust of government intervention with our bodies. This distrust partly stems from a feeling of loss of control about our economic and political lives. As our bodies are the ultimate arena of sensory experiences and which enable thought, it is understandable that when faced with the uncertainty of a world afflicted by recurrent crises, we resist any sort of intervention that purports to protect our health, as an attempt to seize upon the last vestige of something we can control. At the heart of the issue of whether we should vaccinate lies the question: to what extent should we allow intervention into our bodies to accommodate the needs of society? I do not have the answer but, to stress the importance of this problem, scenarios abound that will soon force us to decide: brain chips that purport to cure patients of mental illnesses are being invented, and such chips may also one day purport to give us enhanced productivity, just as smartphones have done; climate crises will soon breed innumerable new diseases that require more vaccinations; gene modification technologies such as CRISPR will be mature enough for parents to seriously contemplate enhancing their children. From a Darwinian angle, all such plug-ins to our archaic life programmes are just adaptations to a changing environment, and we should accept them to the extent that the plug-ins are supported by evidence. This is all right, but shouldn’t we also remind ourselves that natural selection has endowed us with the ability to think about the environment, and therefore we can also change the environment in such ways as to lessen the need for adaptation? This perspective, motivated by our capacity to sympathise with those who cannot adapt, is political. Chuen Chau, Tainan, Taiwan Tell us Putin, who wins in a nuclear war? In light of the recent bombing of a children’s and maternity hospital in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning concerning nuclear weaponry, here’s some free advice for Mr Putin: nobody wins in a nuclear war. The atrocities committed by Russian military forces should be of great concern to China’s leaders. The solution to the carnage is for Putin to come to his senses and leave Ukraine alone. Herb Stark, North Carolina, US
