it does matter if people want to keep saying something is contagious or infectious.
that is all I'm trying to get across.
When you can only catch certain diseases from another person (so they say), then there can't be a first case.
Sheri
At 12:09 PM 7/27/2009, you wrote:
Aph 15 - Organon 6
-
John Harvey
- Posts: 1331
- Joined: Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:00 pm
Re: Aph 15 - Organon 6
Hi, Sheri --
Your point is a good one, but smallpox, like any other infectious illness, is probably the result of microevolution: the evolutionary adaptation of microorganisms (and even viruses) to hosts that previously resisted them.
We've fanned the fires of lots of microevolution with antibiotics, of course, selecting the most resistant to fill the vacuum left by the least resistant and, through poor waste disposal and agricultural antibiotic promiscuity, enabling otherwise harmless bacteria to acquire and share antibiotic-resistance plasmids with bacteria less friendly to us. No doubt we're now doing something analogous with antivirals. But effectively bacteria and viruses mutate pretty fast and, if they happen upon a winning combination -- such as the ability to win past our defences and not kill us before successfully transmitting their genes to another host (via a cough, for instance, or a suppurating lesion) -- then we have illness that passes from person to person.
The first people to have something like smallpox as a result of microevolution (and perhaps a change in host resistance) may have died of it without even passing it on. Eventually, a winning combination of viral properties may have come about through evolution either afresh or, say, through the disposal of victims' bodies by wild animals.
Effectively, smallpox viruses are the intermediate results of a contest between rapidity of their own evolution (which we escalate through many of our traditional medical rituals) and rapidity and versatility of our immune response (which we limit, compromise, and sabotage through many of our traditional medical rituals). Today, it's smallpox. Tomorrow, it's monkeypox. Today, it's a flu. Tomorrow, it's any of hundreds of viruses capable of inflicting on us "flu like" symptoms. It's a very lucrative game for parasites.
Cheers --
John
2009/7/28 Sheri Nakken >
Your point is a good one, but smallpox, like any other infectious illness, is probably the result of microevolution: the evolutionary adaptation of microorganisms (and even viruses) to hosts that previously resisted them.
We've fanned the fires of lots of microevolution with antibiotics, of course, selecting the most resistant to fill the vacuum left by the least resistant and, through poor waste disposal and agricultural antibiotic promiscuity, enabling otherwise harmless bacteria to acquire and share antibiotic-resistance plasmids with bacteria less friendly to us. No doubt we're now doing something analogous with antivirals. But effectively bacteria and viruses mutate pretty fast and, if they happen upon a winning combination -- such as the ability to win past our defences and not kill us before successfully transmitting their genes to another host (via a cough, for instance, or a suppurating lesion) -- then we have illness that passes from person to person.
The first people to have something like smallpox as a result of microevolution (and perhaps a change in host resistance) may have died of it without even passing it on. Eventually, a winning combination of viral properties may have come about through evolution either afresh or, say, through the disposal of victims' bodies by wild animals.
Effectively, smallpox viruses are the intermediate results of a contest between rapidity of their own evolution (which we escalate through many of our traditional medical rituals) and rapidity and versatility of our immune response (which we limit, compromise, and sabotage through many of our traditional medical rituals). Today, it's smallpox. Tomorrow, it's monkeypox. Today, it's a flu. Tomorrow, it's any of hundreds of viruses capable of inflicting on us "flu like" symptoms. It's a very lucrative game for parasites.
Cheers --
John
2009/7/28 Sheri Nakken >