With exploding human populations and a globalized economy, the threat of pandemic disease and fear surrounding such pandemics is a pandemic in itself. Human beings have never been so connected, and it has never been easier for an emerging infectious disease to spread across borders and across oceans. Frightening diseases such as high pathogenicity avian influenza and ebola appear regularly in the news and threaten to cause high mortality in the countries where they emerge as well as abroad. How do we as a society deal with the threat of these dangerous, potentially pandemic pathogens? The answer to that question is more controversial than you might think.