Headline, July25, 2013

'''THE SCARY SCREAMS -OF AN- 

APOCALYPTI​C RECKONING'​''

The breakthroughs are the discovery that hepatitis B and C cause liver cancer; that the same bacteria that causes peptic ulcers causes stomach cancers; that the human papilloma virus causes cervical cancers. Evolution favors the long view, and Ewald is convinced that the long view favors his ideas, because since humankind figured out that the germs caused disease, ''there never has been a time when the spectrum of the diseases acknowledged to be caused by infection hasn't been expanding''  -because, to name just one example, ''in 1970, the percentage of cancers acknowledged to be caused by infection was something like one one-hundredth of a percent. Now it's 20% and rising steadily.''

Ewald feels he has evolutionary biology on his side, and so he is imperturbable. Some Eight years ago he published not only the list of diseases he believes will be found to have their origins in infection, but also the dates when the fact of the infectious origin will be medically accepted. Head and Neck cancers (2010). Childhood leukemia (2015). Breast cancer (2015) . Schizophrenia (2020). In 50 years, he says, humankind will finally be able to do something about them, using the same techniques  -the vaccines, the antibiotics, and the hygienic improvements   -that have proven so successful with so many other infections.

And then? ''We will realize that the diseases we thought of as old age diseases were actually caused by pathogens. And once we get rid of them, there is no evolutionary reason that we shouldn't be very healthy all the way into our mid to late nineties, when it is in evolution's interest to program our bodies to fall apart.''

It sounds too simple. No, it sounds reductive  - a naive utopianism based on understandings science has long outgrown. the human-genome project seems  less a scientific project than some kind of realization of our own evolutionary destiny............and here comes Paul Ewald promoting the idea that everything is caused by germs?  ''Real advances generally turn out to be pretty simple,'' Ewald says. ''People don't want them to be, because then they have been beating their brains out for nothing. They'll look pretty stupid.'' He insists that he is no true believer, that his only true belief is in science.

And sciences ability to draw distinctions between true beliefs and beliefs that actually turn to be true. He is not just a theorist.; he has a lab, and he performs experiments intended to either prove or to disprove his alternative hypothesis. Currently, he is involved in an experiment that takes advantage of the immuneoppression that occurs during the menstrual cycle to determine if what causes PMS is actually a pulse of chronic infection. It is an ambitious experiment. But since Ewald is an evolutionary biologist, the success of his idea ultimately rests on the experiments conducted by nature itself. 

And right now nature is conducting one of terrifying ambition and scope in the farms and markets of east Asia. The hype surrounding the HSN1 influenza has proven itself to be both virulent and transmissible in humans; if HSN1  itself is as successful as its adaptive strategies, nature will have its apocalyptic reckoning. There will be riots at the vaccination centres . There will be quarantined imposed and enforced at the point of gun. Moreover, Paul Ewald will be proven wrong, although, as he says:

''People who have been predicting major pandemic have been wrong for thirty years. I've been right for fifteen years, even though the flu community has been just as critical of me. At some point though, we have to look at the track record. Who has the right answers and who doesn't? And how many years  have to pass before the right answer is right? Five? Ten? Fifty? If fifty years pass and there is no pandemic, will I be considered right? or will people say that we are still due?''

He will most likely be dead by then. Most of us will be, from an infection we caught somewhere. maybe from the pandemic of chronic disease, or maybe just from a chicken at the local supermarket.

With respectful dedication to all the research scientists of the world.

With respectful dedication to all the Students and Professors of Bolivia. See ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless : The Hardest Quiz Ever.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless