The human immune system is astonishing. As an oversimplified explanation, populations are exposed to many harmful biological factors, but the body responds by recognizing the threat and mounting a response or building a “resistance”. Some die, but those who survive are immune. This immunity is particularly visible in isolated populations.
Imagine a mysterious bacteria recently arrived from outer space. The initial result would be devastating. No one’s body would be prepared for the exact nature of the insult. Over time, however, and assuming the entire human race did not die, resistance would develop among the survivors. If then a similar bacterium arrived the next year, the surviving humans would have a much higher survival rate. Ultimately the insult would become a common disease, but one with which we could live.
Important examples of this insult and occasional immunity occur throughout history. They can be seen in the rapid decline, and sometimes total decimation, of indigenous populations in the “new world” after the arrival of Europeans. Diseases that were fairly standard to European populations had catastrophic effects on new populations. The Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest had 11,000 fatalities in the 1770’s out of a population of 37,000 when smallpox appeared, probably courtesy of early trappers. Ultimately the tribe reached a low point of about 9,000 survivors after other diseases including measles and influenza also took their toll. The Sewee Indians of modern day South Carolina lost huge numbers to smallpox and other viruses. In 1701 John Lawson wrote of the effect of smallpox on the Sewee:
“These Sewees have been formerly a large Nation, though now very much decreas’d since the English hath seated their Land, and all other Nations of Indians are observ’d to partake of the same fate, where the Europeans come, the Indians being a People very apt to catch any Distemper they are afflicted withal; the Small-Pox has destroy’d many thousands of the Natives, who no sooner than they are attack’d with the violent Fevers and the Burning …by which Means Death most commonly ensues”.
A more devastating example may be the Yamani population of Tierra del Fuego. They had managed to live in the harshest conditions for many centuries. They wore no clothes, keeping fires going constantly, even in their canoes (hence the name “Land of Fire”). The women would dive in to the harsh Southern ocean to retrieve mussels for food. Surely these were hardy people. When the Rev. Thomas Bridges, one of the early missionaries, arrived in South America in the late 1800’s, he was so taken with their culture that he translated their entire language. Sadly, it is a book that will no longer be read except by linguistic scholars. Diseases familiar to the Europeans, but completely unknown to the Yamani, ultimately wiped out the entire population.
We are not really expecting an unknown disease from outer space, but the possibility of devastating agents exist closer to home. Consider the smallpox again, a disease we have eradicated. It killed many in its history, but many lived as well. It has been many years since any living human has been exposed to the smallpox virus; indeed, we no longer vaccinate for it. But it’s gone isn’t it? Eradicated from the face of the earth?
Not exactly. It is an established, and not very well hidden fact, that small vials exist in a top security biolab of the British, at a Soviet facility in Siberia, and at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The rationale for keeping a specimen is, well, there are reasons. But if it ever got loose …
Again, past history did not involve premeditated military applications (Although Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commanding general of British force in America during the French and Indian War, 1756-1763, did distribute blankets from smallpox victims to crush an Indian uprising). And there are certainly other viruses, bacteria, rickettsia, deformed self replicating proteins, etc, that exist somewhere on the earth, currently in a caged environment of nature’s own making. They may be trapped in glacier that is now melting. They may be carried by a little known or unknown animal species that we are about to come in contact with through the encroachment of civilization. At any rate, the possibility exists that such biologic agents are already on Earth. And further, that they could appear without warning. With all our scientific advances since the days of the Yamani, we would still be helpless against such a novel threat.
Pure Research, often funded by government grants, frequently comes under fire for its lack of direct utility and immediate application. Yet one should consider the vast array of antigenics and antibiotics that have emerged from such enterprises.
Today, an estimated 33 million people are living with, and dying from, AIDS. There is no antigen.
No comments:
Post a Comment