BUILDING A BETTER BACTERIUM
The chemicals in vaccines attack and destroy germs and combat disease however they aren’t always 100% effective. In some cases, germs remain in the body and create new strains of the original disease which at times prove fatal. In an age where vaccination and medical treatment has all but wiped out previously incurable diseases like measles, smallpox and yellow fever, how could this be possible? The answer lies in Darwin’s theory of evolution, by which only the strong survive long enough to reproduce, thus naturally selecting traits that will continue the species.
Although science is constantly evolving, new strains of disease remain resistant to our most advanced medicines. Some examples of drug resistant strains include Bird Flu and the bacteria responsible for Staph infections. http://www.wsws.org/science/1998/jun1998/germ-j25.shtml What can we do today to prevent these drug resistant strains from wiping out a large part of our population? Are we poised for a modern day plague?
April 25th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I do a lot of flying. I’m always seeing people who are sick around me and people getting sick from being stuck close to each other. Now I’m hearing that they wont pass a “passenger bill of rights” that protects people from being trapped on runways for hours on end with no fresh water and toilets overflowing. How gross is that? http://www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com
Everyone’s been talking about flu and viruses and bacteria and stuff that can infect all of us, shouldn’t the government be concerned about trying to keep people out of circumstances where they are more likely to get sick? What if someone had something super contagious on one of those planes that got trapped for 8 hours waiting to take off? Everyone would be sick! Just the other day I was listening to NPR and they said that there were three new cases discovered in China involving bird flu, and that if it were to spread outside of the quarantine it would be the worst infection of our time. Even worse, they say that the most likely place to get sick from it is on airplanes traveled internationally!
It’s making me wish I didn’t have to fly so much.