Disease is Never Fatal (Health)

[Ishmael]

I am about to tell you something new.

I say this because, what I am about to tell you will strike you as so eminently reasonable that you will assume you've heard it before and have known it all along.

No one has ever died of a disease.

Diseases do not kill their hosts. If a disease was incompatible with its host, it couldn't manage to infect that host. We only ever get infected by compatible viri and bacillus.

What kills us is the cure.

Or rather, killing us is the cure.

When a host becomes infected, the body immediately goes into emergency mode to destroy that infection. Or rather, the single-celled organisms within us tell the body to go into emergency mode and our body dutifully does as it's told.

This emergency mode is what manifests as the specific symptoms of the particular infection. Many or most of the symptoms of the disease are the body's particular counter-measures used against the infection (or the infection's response to those counter-measures). Our ailing bodies and minds are collateral damage in a war between two colonies of single-celled organisms battling for control of the host.

But our bodies come equipped with a fail-safe mechanism. If our native species of bacilli and virii determine that all is lost, still they will not surrender. Instead, they hit the self-destruct button. One by one, the body's organs begin to shut down, denying the invader any succor from its victory.

The battle for one body is lost but, by burning the fields, the species as a whole can be saved.

But saved....for whom?

[Ishmael]

Bit surprised this has not generated any discussion.

[Mick Harper]

It's just too radically breathtaking for the likes of us. You have to bring it down a notch or two. I'm surprised my DVD posting got no response but I've learned to be philosophical about these things.

[Ishmael]

I don't see how the sarcasm was warranted. Your DVD posting was definitely noted with unexpressed enthusiasm and excitement, though I can't yet order it in my region (as you mentioned). Can't wait to do so!

I continue work on the book version. It's very slow going now as I'm nearing the end and the source material is running out.

[Mick Harper]

What sarcasm? I was simply giving you my opinion as to why you didn't get responses. It certainly applied to me and (as usual) that meant I assumed it applied to everyone else.

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

Ah, my wife ate my homework. Your explanation, though somewhat overelaborate, is accepted.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Ishmael]

A reboot?

[Wile E. Coyote]

Well why not..

My Dtr has a female friend, whose boyfriend was at a drinking party. You know the sort, you get drunk, and test yourself with dares. Net result he ended up with a serious brain injury.......after falling down the stairs.

The medical treatment was to put him into a medically induced coma and then wait.....

Three or four days later they operated.

Hey presto he is now almost fully recovered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_coma.

By partially closing down a organ your body is not self destructing, you are maximising your survival chance, by diverting energy resources to where they are more needed.

The problem comes when your body is shifting resources, on too many fronts. More than one organ needs to partially close.

Your defences become overloaded.

Still you don't give up or self destruct, your organs try more and more elaborate forms of closure.

The logic is to reboot.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Hey dont try this at home.

[Ishmael]

I am sure that you missed the entire point of my original post.

[Mick Harper]

As I keep reminding you, Ishmael, "Whose fault is that?"

[Hatty]

I'm not sure I've grasped the medical science (or even if this is the right thread) but whole populations are apparently becoming more resistant to antibiotics.

Person A regularly takes antibiotics, he'll need stronger and stronger doses and eventually be resistant to all the currently prescribed ones, but if B very rarely has to take antibiotics, why would his resistance be affected by A's predicament? (Of course it is foolhardy to prescribe antibiotics to a pregnant woman and would surely only be done in serious cases.)

It may be the dead animals we eat are pumped full of drugs but presumably food standards agencies, at least in the west, monitor this. (Are veggies noticeably healthier than everyone else?)

On a sociological note, a doctor interviewed on the news explained, rather lamely I thought, that patients 'demanded antibiotics'. It would seem that GPs nowadays aren't in the driving seat.

[Boreades]

Something like 90% of the sales of antibiotics in the UK are to vets for herd or flock treatment. So it's in the food chain for all meat-eaters. Whether the antibiotics are broken down by cooking the meat is hard to determine.

See (e.g.) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/veterinary-antimicrobial-resistance-and-sales-surveillance-2013