What’s a flu like you doing in a host like this? by Marlene Zuk for The Financial Times
Amidst all the swine flu hype and hysteria, the hand-wringing and hand-washing, we have a lot of questions. How bad is this particular flu going to be – more like the usual seasonal viruses, or like the rapacious 1918 version that killed millions worldwide? Will a vaccine be available soon? What are the distinguishing symptoms? But one question seems to be going unasked: how does the flu virus feel about all this?
A virus does not have feelings, exactly. It infects without foresight, malice or mercy. But to understand a disease, it is important to look at things from the point of view of the organism – virus, bacteria or worm – that causes it. Take virulence, for example, the degree of damage a pathogen does to its host. The conventional wisdom used to be that a proper disease evolved to become relatively benign; why bite the hand that feeds you, not to mention the vital organs making that feeding possible?
The idea was that only new diseases would run rampant and have truly devastating effects. Once the disease organism settled down and learnt to behave, as it were, its excesses would be moderated and host and parasite would live together, if not in equanimity then at least without total ruin.
For the rest of the article, click here.
"Bacteria, viruses and fungi cause of all kinds of major and minor plagues and pestilences: bird flu, Ebola, smallpox, athlete's foot. We blast the critters with antimicrobials and recoil in horror should a cookie we're about to eat fall on the ground. (Unless there's no one watching--in which case many folks, we suspect, eat the cookie.) As for worms: Well, think tapeworm. And cringe. But there is another way to think about microbes and worms--as entities that have lovingly helped shape the human form. Such is the viewpoint of evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk." -- Los Angeles Times
"Fascinating." --Natalie Angier, The New York Times
"What's eating you? Or to put it more politely, "sharing your space," which happens to be your body? The answers are oddly consoling in evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk's witty "disease appreciation" course... Beguiling." -- O, The Oprah Magazine
"Witty and erudite, Zuk writes in a conversational tone, complete with wry observations not only about her subject but also about science and scientists. Her book may not make you happy about the various pathogens, bacteria and diseases that thrive in our world, but Zuk will give you new appreciation to their complexity and how some of them have even help us." -- Seattle Times
"Thought-provoking and sublimely witty." -- Boston Globe
