Close up shot of young female healthcare specialist hands holding ampoule with coronavirus vaccine preparing injection for covid vaccination, doctor or nurse in protective uniform work with vaccine"What's it going to be then, eh?"

That is the opening line to Anthony Burgess's 1962 tour de force, A Clockwork Orange, a story set in a dystopian future where crime had evolved into a juggernaut threatening the existence of ordered society. A medical panacea emerges in the novel in the form of voluntary alternative-sentencing behavior modification: The subject criminal is given an injection that makes him debilitatingly ill while being forced simultaneously to watch films depicting graphic violence.

The Pavlovian result over a period of treatments is that the subject becomes ill anytime they are exposed to violence. After choosing the alternative sentence, the criminal's choice to be law-abiding is gone. Law and medicine solved the problem presented by the pandemic of violence.