This is the way the world ends

T.S. Elliot wrote in his poem "The Hollow Men":

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Today, somewhere in the world, the person who would have cured cancer, ended AIDS, and innoculated us against the zombie virus was cruelly murdered. Maybe s/he was a college student raped and murdered in Central Park. Maybe s/he was a child whose mother's drunken boyfriend threw into a wall too hard this time. Maybe s/he was aborted. We will never know, because that person is gone. That one piece that could have saved everything was destroyed, and unwittingly we see the news (or not) and sigh, "another one, poor thing." That will be that. We'll go on with our diseases and wars because we slayed our modern savior - and we won't even know it.