Here\u2019s some health news: My pal Sparky has resumed his two-pack-a-day cigarette regimen. This means everything is back to normal on the flu front. If your doctor hasn\u2019t gotten the word yet, don\u2019t worry, you can just mention that Sparky said everything\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n
You may recall that, as a precautionary measure, Sparky temporarily cut back to being a one-pack man a few months ago. That\u2019s back when the flu was dropping people like bowling pins. Paradoxically, the stronger they were, the harder they fell. That was a very strange state of affairs. Even Sparky got concerned, and Sparky usually don\u2019t worry \u2018bout nothin\u2019. <\/p>\n
Anyway, now that all that stuff has blown over we can resume our normal habits. <\/p>\n
Sparky has refueled his Zippo. Me, I\u2019m back to slouching in my beach chair, throwing pebbles into the water, and contemplating things that I\u2019m not nearly smart enough to understand. That\u2019s a mighty long list. Fortunately, I\u2019ve got a lot of pebbles. <\/p>\n
Since we\u2019ve been talking about the flu I\u2019ll toss out this contemplation: germs.<\/p>\n
If I had to pick one thing that defines the \u201cmodern\u201d era, I\u2019d say it\u2019s the germ theory of disease along with related developments such as antibiotics. This stuff is remarkably recent in origin. Well, I guess if you want to get picky about things, you could cite some old developments such as the ancient Egyptian practice of putting honey (which has antibiotic properties) on wounds. <\/p>\n
But I\u2019ll just take the conventional outlook here. In my schooldays we learned about two heroes of the modern era. These were Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), the French chemist associated with giving germ theory its broad credibility, and Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), the Scottish doctor who discovered penicillin.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the post-WWII era that the age of antibiotics really got rolling. My grandmother, a nurse, had clear recollections of people getting wiped out by tuberculosis and she said it wasn\u2019t until the 1950s that they firmly had the lid on it in the U.S. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, on the viral front, in 1952 an American doctor, Jonas Salk (1914-1995), unveiled his polio vaccine. After that is still took nearly a decade for polio vaccination efforts to really propagate through the U.S. There\u2019s a lot more to the polio story than that, and it\u2019s an interesting part of history.<\/p>\n
This history is recent indeed. My parents remember polio.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, I reckon that I am of the first generation to be born into a time and place where science had largely conquered the major infectious threats. That strikes me as a mighty fortunate situation.<\/p>\n
Of course, nature never rests. Germs have been around a lot longer than we have. <\/p>\n
So whether the recent successes are a sustainable trajectory, or merely constitute an aberration destined to snap back to the mean, well, it\u2019s not for me to say. <\/p>\n
Not all microorganisms are dangerous to us, of course. Here\u2019s some weird science: It\u2019s been estimated that the human body contains more microbe cells (bacteria, etc.) than human cells. So, in a sense, we\u2019re more them than we are us.<\/p>\n
If that weird science doesn\u2019t freak you out, here\u2019s an even weirder notion that might do the trick. In his book Straw Dogs, the philosopher John Gray presents the notion that humans are \u201ctechnological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as a means of genetic survival.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now there\u2019s a twist in the plot, eh? If you want to entertain that notion, then humans have vanquished some germs, only to remain as walking meat colonies owned by some other germs. In that case, are we merely human battlefields, getting stomped all over while the microscopic combatants slug it out? I guess you could make that argument. <\/p>\n
As for me, well, I\u2019ve thought about this germ thing long enough. It just gets more and more complicated. Furthermore, I\u2019m out of pebbles. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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