Free will and bodily autonomy are soon to be quaint memories of a bygone era, fleeting, sepia-toned visions hovering somewhere in the dusty attic of our minds.

Scientists are currently developing "self-spreading vaccines" that could transmit themselves to others in close proximity.  According to National Geographic, they are feverishly working, engaged in experiments to come up with a vaccine that will spread to unvaccinated people — or even animals — as if by osmosis.

The report states that scientists are currently developing "contagious vaccines" for Ebola; bovine tuberculosis; and Lassa fever, a viral disease spread by rats.  The scientists are also planning to expand their studies to other diseases — including rabies, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and the Plague.

The goal is to create a vaccine that would "infect" its recipient in such a way that he could pass on vaccination to others around him, in much the same way that he could pass on a disease.  Thus, one vaccinated person or animal in a given community would spread the purported benefits of the vaccination to those around it.  With or without knowing that fact.  Full disclosure?

These new vaccines would be so-called recombinant viruses and use a cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a proud member of the herpes family of viruses.

National Geographic reported:

Imagine a cure that's as contagious as the disease it fights — a vaccine that could replicate in a host's body and spread to others nearby, quickly and easily protecting a whole population from microbial attacks. That's the goal of several teams around the world who are reviving controversial research to develop self-spreading vaccines.

Advocates for the infectious vaccines claim the goal is to revolutionize public health by disrupting infectious disease spread, potentially preventing the next pandemic.

But skeptics argue that the viruses used in these vaccines could themselves mutate, jump species, or set off a chain reaction with devastating effects across entire ecosystems.

For example, Jonas Sandbrink — a biosecurity researcher at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute — noted: "Even if you just start by setting it out into animal populations, part of the genetic elements might find their way back into humans."  He added, "Once you set something engineered and self-transmissible out into nature, you don't know what happens to it and where it will go."

Oh, don't be such Debbie Downers!  Experts would make sure nothing like that could possibly happen, right?  Right?

I'm old enough to remember when vaccines were supposed to prevent transmission, infection, and contagion, not promote them.

And I can't help but think these vaccines are being developed to make it impossible for people to avoid getting vaccinated, impossible to choose not to be infected with a given vaccine or experimental gene therapy.  "Deniers" would be effectively, and perhaps unknowingly, forced to cede their own bodies to the vaccines — and the will of the government or other entity.  Shades of the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

As of this writing, no one has yet conducted any field or laboratory studies assessing the impact and safety of these self-spreading vaccines.

The Canadian rock band Rush wrote a popular song (released in 1980) called "Freewill," the last line of which reads: "I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will."

Soon, we may no longer have that choice.

Graphic credit: Betacommand at en.Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 license.