Blog #232--Viruses, Microbes and Parasites, Oh My!
Like all living species on earth, humans don’t like being preyed upon. But we are more than just protective against foreign invasion of our bodies. We are also offended personally and seek vengeance. Since we pretend we are superior to all other species, we wish to kill off anything that dares compromise our assumption of hegemony over Nature.
If we are superior to other life forms, some of them seem to have missed the message. While a number of large predatory species can kill humans, most predators don’t hunt humans for their sustenance. A few shark attacks may be for meals, but defense of territory and self-protection are the primary motivations for attacks on humans. That is not true for our smallest enemies.
Organisms like viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites have no respect for us. They simply need us for their survival, so they take advantage of us whenever possible. Viruses are especially invasive and difficult to treat once they have infected us. They are capable of invading individual cells within our bodies and altering our DNA to allow for them to replicate themselves. Some are self-limiting, dying off after a short lifespan within us, while others are capable of killing large numbers of people by spreading rapidly from one person to another.
No doubt many people resent these invasive life forms. But what they do inside our bodies is little different than one country invading another country, taking over the government, rewriting the country’s constitution to allow them unfettered access to all its resources and creating laws giving them immunity from prosecution for their methods of takeover and wealth accumulation. Like what the U.S. did with Iraq, for example.
We have a few drugs that work some of the time on some viruses, but many viruses can’t be treated. A few can be countered by creating vaccines to prevent their occurrence, but even that is an imprecise solution. Otherwise, all we can do is hope our immune systems are sufficient to withstand the onslaught. Viruses are capable of surviving all sorts of extreme situations and can redevelop many years after their previous outbreak. No wonder we don’t like them...they don’t care who we are, only that we can be used to aid their survival. People often treat others the same way when they can get away with it, so their behavior should be familiar to us.
My Microbiology professor absolutely loved microbes. He was enchanted by their complexity despite their minute size. Like viruses, they don’t care who we are. They are merely trying to survive, just like us. Some are actually beneficial, such as the bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract that aid food digestion, or the microscopic crawlies that eat our dead skin cells without us even knowing they exist.
But other bacteria and assorted goblins can do us great harm. We have developed antibiotics to handle some of them, but over time these microorganisms have mutated and are now more resistant to our medicines. Despite being tiny, they are amazingly complex and super efficient. We continue to fight a battle with them, and we get stronger as we proceed. But all we’re really doing is creating survival pressure sufficient for them to adapt into something that might be more destructive than their predecessors. We’re fortunate to break even with them over time.
Parasites live off of others without contributing to their survival. Many of the organisms mentioned above have parasitic natures. Humans who trick others into providing their survival needs can truly be called parasites as well, so we can’t limit our discussion to tiny beasties alone, although we will in this article. Since Parasitology, Virology, Microbiology and Bacteriology are considered separate fields of study, we are separating them as well. But they are all variations on the same theme.
Until recent times, the general public didn’t know about parasites, especially internal ones. So they called them “devils” since they caused us harm. They could see fleas, ticks, lice, mosquitoes and a few of the other external parasites, so they knew to avoid them whenever possible. They sometimes found parasite inhibitors growing naturally in their environments, but otherwise they simply had to live with a constant nuisance factor. Of course, they had no idea that these insects could spread other diseases, like the ticks that spread lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever, or mosquitoes that spread malaria, zika and certain respiratory viruses among others.
They didn’t know how they became infected with internal parasites like roundworms or tapeworms, so they kept making the same mistakes over the centuries until a bit of inspiration helped put cause and effect together. Eating raw meat transmits some types of parasites to people. Touching something contaminated with parasite eggs and then putting those fingers into our mouths can do the same thing, depending on the parasite. Some internal parasites reside in our gastrointestinal tract, eating the foods we send them and then eliminating their eggs through our feces. Some penetrate into our bodies and produce more destructive adult worms within us. Hookworms and liver flukes are two of many examples.
Many scientists have studied parasitic organisms to learn their complex life cycles, which often require time within a secondary host before reaching our bodies and becoming adults. We have learned a great deal about them, enough for us to realize our similarity to them. They are amazingly complex and efficient despite their small size. Many are better able to survive than humans. Some people behave just like them.
They may offend our sensitivities, but they are talented survivors. We need to respect them, whether we like what they do or not. And we need to accept the reality that we are not superior to other life forms but relatively equal in this world, all fighting to survive one more day. It is a give and take process; the best we can do is break even.
Whoever created us created viruses, microbes and parasites using the same formula. In that sense, they are our brothers. We don’t always get along well, but we all continue to endure. Maybe loving them would reduce their destructive effects. After all, we’ve tried everything else.
Blog update: The 232 blogs I’ve shared have nearly duplicated the number of pages in my book “It’s a Secret, So Pass it On: a Toolbox For Life.” So unless I receive new inspiration or greater demand, I will now write one blog a week rather than two.
http://dreamtime3.wixsite.com/jacktuttlebook
Comments and questions can be directed to dreamtime@insight-books.com.