Why Do We Get Sick?

[JoanDrake]

If you are not familiar with the series of books on Panspermia and particularly with Diseases from Space I will try to elaborate on its central theme and then ask why it seems regarded with such disdain by most scientists.

The major question of Diseases From Space seems to be "Why do we, (or any organisms really), get sick? This is not as silly a question as it seems at first. Yes, diseases generally act as parasites, stealing our sustenance so they prosper as we suffer, but this only goes so far. If we die, after all, so do they.

In fact, the longer a disease is in the organism's genome (measured in generations, not a single lifetime, the more a disease seems to "recognize" this, and become symbiotic rather than parasitic. The book points out several examples. There is nothing mystical or even mysterious as to why this happens, it is a natural consequence of evolution.

Now the book really doesn't question why there is disease in the first place. It recognises parasitism but sees it, at least in the microbial stage, as a transitional phase in an organism's evolutionary history. (It even recognises that some diseases will not become symbiotic by nature, but I forget the exact mechanisms that cause this)

Mainly, however, it posits that most diseases that have been on the Earth for several million years, (and have thus gone through countless billions of generations.) should be symbiotic by now. Many, in fact, are.

So where do "new" diseases come from. DFS suggests they come from comets. The book and its companion volumes point out that comets as we have come to know them are almost ideal incubators for primordial life.

Now the idea of Panspermia is a small but growing trend in science. It is not regarded as ascientific (AFAIK) and has its adherents.

The idea, however, that most of the maladies we suffer most from have been brought here from above is greeted with almost universal derision, and I cannot see why.

It does rather neatly explain one of the greatest mysteries of the historical record. In the Ancient World empires rose and Empires fell, but in around 500CE the Roman Empire and the Chinese Han both declined rather rapidly from periods of reform and, more mysteriously, neither they nor really any other rose to replace them for nearly a millenium.

And the stranger thing here is that the population of the world, which had been rising steadily for thousands of years, also declined precipitately at this time. This is something that has only recently come to light from the very fragmentary demographic records we have from that time.

Am I missing something obvious in the disciplines of epidemiology/statistics or something else?

 

[prizzley]

And it posits that all diseases that have been on the Earth for several million years, (and have thus gone through countless billions of generations.) should be symbiotic by now. Many, in fact, are.

So where do "new" diseases come from. DFS suggests they come from comets.

As a non-scientist, I'd suggest firstly that while the diseases are changing, so are the hosts. Secondly, I doubt there's any "new" disease, only ones we haven't been exposed to yet. No disease is originally world-wide. It has to spread. And evolve.

Sorry. I don't buy the comet theory. It sounds "flat earth" to me.

 

[Venusian Broon]

It does rather neatly explain one of the greatest mysteries of the historical record. In the Ancient World empires rose and Empires fell, but in around 500CE the Roman Empire and the Chinese Han both declined rather rapidly from periods of reform and, more mysteriously, neither they nor really any other rose to replace them for nearly a millenium.

I disagree a wee bit.

The Western Roman Empire stopped as an effective political force (or perhaps better put - was absorbed by the vatican and the pope) but the Eastern Roman Empire continued happily along for another thousand years (well, perhaps not happily, it slowly evaporated, but it reached its most powerful ~1000CE...)

The muslim empires reached their zeniths in the period 700-1000CE, and were comparable in scope to the Roman before. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples worldwide.

Am I missing something obvious in the disciplines of epidemiology/statistics or something else?

May I posit another idea to consider? That earthly virusus and bacteria will randomly mutate but need not always produce milder and milder forms of disease and become symbiotic - as you put it? Perhaps even develop "new" diseases?

Another idea to mull over. It seems odd that we look at tiny snowballs in space as ideal places to incubate life, when we have a vast world choke full of billions upon billions upon billions of different bacteria/virusus and in incredibly high density. What does change over time is that ecologies alter and in doing so, species that may have been "dormant" and "hidden" all of a sudden find new niches to exploit - hence there could be an inexhaustable supply of new diseases just lying out there, maybe in the dirt of a jungle floor, maybe somewhere on the ocean floor - just requiring a bit of stirring to adapt to a new habitat, like a human!

Now the idea of Panspermia is a small but growing trend in science. It is not regarded as ascientific (AFAIK) and has its adherents.

The idea, however, that most of the maladies we suffer most from have been brought here from above is greeted with almost universal derision, and I cannot see why.

I'm actually quite open to this being possible. It definitely is an idea that is gaining traction. And is interesting to think about.

However the onus is on those that believe it to show the evidence. If life really is descending from the heavens then it should be marked as being different in some manner from anything that developed on earth, whether that's chemical composition, physiological differences, unique genetics or the big clincher - actually being discovered in a comet in space

 

[The Judge]

I'll leave this one to the scientists, though I can't say I'm convinced.

Anyhow, I really don't think it's a GWD matter, Joan, so I'll move it over to Science/Nature, which is its evolutionary niche, I think.

 

[Vertigo]

I pretty much agree with VB here. Whilst I don't reject Panspermia by any means, Occam's Razor suggests I should give more weight to the idea of life and indeed diseases evloving in the nice biologically friendly environment here on Earth rather than in the much more hostile environment in space. As I say I don't reject it but if some new stuff comes from space I doubt it compares to the amount of 'new' stuff evolving down here.

Secondly, as Prizzley, says I don't think there have been any truly new diseases discovered for a long time. What keeps getting us are mutations of diseases that have been around for a long time.

I think the major flaw in your argument is whether the disease 'dies' with its host. And by 'dies' I mean dies genetically and is therefore an evolutionary failure. Evolution doesn't care about indiviual deaths so long as the gene is successful, and when the host dies, so long as the disease has spread to other hosts first, then it is an evolutionary success despite killing its host. In other words with a contagious disease the fate of the host is irrelevant to the genetic success of the disease.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I have no idea. I do have ME so that gives me an insight into how sometimes science and medicine can be pretty useless.

I do know snow and volcanic ash clouds make it worse than normal - they are the only two discernible triggers I can find. I'm a much better predictor of snow than the met office and the only time I get it wrong I turn on the news to find out about a volcanic eruption somewhere in Europe.

 

[jastius]

some diseases are not bacterial or viral in nature but fungal. spores and yeasts and tiny fungus-es and molds.
one of the bigger problems today along the lines of asthma making elements is the respiratory impact of black mold. molds and fungus-es can and do reconfigure bacteria and viruses. sometimes they can kill them outright. sometimes they reboot them and make them superviruses.

 

[hopewrites]

I'll go out on a limb here and express what I feel makes us vulnerable to disease, as I feel that is crux of the question.

One must begin on the premise that a being is not merely physical in nature. That the physical is 1/3 of the whole and at the mercy of the other 2/3. One's spiritual health and ones mental/emotional health play a key roll in one's physical health.
ie: thinking oneself sick, or stressing oneself sick.

I would propose that weakness in any or a combination of the three would increase one's susceptibility to illness. I would further propose that physicality makes up the weakest third of the whole and that its weaknesses can be over come by the strengths of the others.
ie: faith healing, willing oneself through some illness.

we get sick when one of the stronger thirds or when a combination of two or more thirds become weakened, through action or inaction on our part. Thus leaving us more vulnerable to the myriad of ailments ever present in our surroundings.

 

[Gordian Knot]

I have to agree with the concept that there is a lot more to be concerned about right here on the planet than from any potential threat from outer space. Not that it is impossible that a comet or meteor couldn't bring some unknown pathogen to Earth; just that the other prospects are astronomically more likely to cause problems.

One of the concepts that has been explored in SF more than a few times is one that I find intriguing. That of dissolving an ancient threat from an ice core that bored several hundreds of thousands of years into the past on an ice sheet. Something fairly benign then but devastating to the ecosystem today being accidentally released. Interesting as a theory, but I have never heard of anything like that happening.

The biggest threat to why we get sick is good old fashioned, boring, mutations of chemistry that are on the planet already. Things like Ebola, which are astonishingly powerful and destructive which popped out of the planet's natural biosphere.

Though probably the most frightening are the diseases we already know that were mostly already defeated that are making comebacks in forms that are mutated just enough to be not affected by our traditional treatments. With the result that we are mostly defenseless against them. Now that is scary stuff!

 

[JoanDrake]

I wish I could find the book. The authors are eminent scientists and make much better arguments than me.

And the refutations, which they also publish quite freely, are very similar to what I see here, so I guess they have a point too.

Just seemed there could be a story or two in there. I should get busy writing one, I guess

Oh, and thanks for moving this, milord. I am constantly discovering new parts of this site and your gentle aide in these matters is always appreciated.

 

[Steven Dickson]

I wish I could find the book. The authors are eminent scientists and make much better arguments than me.

You're probably thinking about 'Diseases From Space' or its follow-ups by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe.

They're both proponents of intelligent design and Wickramasinghe has actively defended creationism and argued against evolution in creationist trials in the US.

 

[Mirannan]

One thing that's becoming clear is that disease organisms, particularly viruses, swop genes with each other with astonishing frequency. This is probably one of the reasons for the outbreaks of swine and avain flus in humans in the last few years - all of them seem to have started in places where humans and birds (for example, and mostly chickens) live in close proximity. The result is a new organism with material from avian and human influenzas, to which human immune systems (and perhaps chicken ones too - has anyone checked?) have difficulty responding.

The really nasty ones, such as Ebola for example, seem to be ones that human interference with jungle ecosystems exposes humans too - it's quite likely that Ebola has been around for at least millennia, and it's only recently that humans have become exposed to it.