unfortunately yes. there are inevitably many illnesses we have never seen before out in the world, frozen in the permafrost, in jungled, in animals which will mutate and be able to transfer to man.
The more we know about as many infectious agents as possible and creating new drugs and vaccines, the better chance that we will be able to stop it before it is too late. I think the biggest fear scientists often have is what if a very bad scientist (or a good scientist is made to by a bad man by threatening family friends etc) purposely makes a new infectious agent designed to be very good at spreading very quickly and kills very quickly. We hope biowarfare and bioterrorism never happens, but governments and scientists need to be aware that it could so that they can be as prepared as possible.
This is why places like america have a CDC and protocols in place for hospitals and doctors to report anything that looks unusual. Luckily we have quick and cheap ways to now take a sample and sequence it’s whole genome, all of it’s DNA and this can make identifying or comparing any new infection that may appear much easier.
Excellent question misszombie – the answer is YES. But how?
Let’s go back to 1300s AD when black plague killed ~ 150million people in Europe. Scientist suggest that the cause of black plague is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis – it could be another bacteria, doesn’t matter. Many diseases are caused by bacteria. (Small sidenote: only 1% of world’s bacteria cause diseases, most bacteria is our friend rather than a foe). Bacteria is a living organism, like plants, animals or humans. Unlike humans they don’t want to make more money or have a happy life, all they want is to “survive” by passing their genes on to next generations. Bacteria don’t have any hostility against humans and we are so lucky otherwise bacteria could wipe out all of humans less than a year. Bacteria sometimes need hosts to grow and reproduce itself. They don’t intentionally choose humans but if they happen to infect humans our immune system shows reaction to kill them. Some bacteria can avoid it by mutating into a more stronger form or mutating to be a stealth bacteria so that they can avoid getting caught by our immune system. When this happens, they can infect us and cause deaths.
Coming back to possibility for a illness to get to black plague proportions… Unfortunately there is already a growing problem which causes death of many patients in hospitals all around the world. It is known as hospital bacteria. Many people recover from deadly diseases like cancer, cardiovascular or even bad traffic accidents but you hear them they die due to hospital infection. The hospital bacteria is a quite tough one to kill and they are getting harder and harder to kill everyday because they grow resistant to many antibiotics. Would it reach to black plague level – we are trying our best to control them but they already cause many deaths…
Unfortunately we can’t blame hospital bacteria at all because they became so strong because of the mis-use of antibiotics by doctors. Here is the main difference between a doctor and scientist. Doctors save lives, yes but they have a limited knowledge – they can’t think like a scientist. They learn very hard skills which help them to operate humans and save them from various diseases or conditions but doctors do not think like a scientist they are like mechanics – they diagnose the problem and fix it, they don’t ask questions a lot- that’s why everything becomes a routine after a while. When penicillin was first invented it certainly was a big discovery – easiest way to kill bacteria (99.9%) What doctors didn’t think was what happened to remaining 0.1%, guess what they grew resistance and become stronger every day. Now we can’t handle them because hardly any antibiotic works on them… Don’t worry though, scientists are working very hard to find ways to keep the bacteria under control. But there is always a possibility for diseases to get to black plague proportion. Don’t mess with bacteria…
unfortunately yes. there are inevitably many illnesses we have never seen before out in the world, frozen in the permafrost, in jungled, in animals which will mutate and be able to transfer to man.
The more we know about as many infectious agents as possible and creating new drugs and vaccines, the better chance that we will be able to stop it before it is too late. I think the biggest fear scientists often have is what if a very bad scientist (or a good scientist is made to by a bad man by threatening family friends etc) purposely makes a new infectious agent designed to be very good at spreading very quickly and kills very quickly. We hope biowarfare and bioterrorism never happens, but governments and scientists need to be aware that it could so that they can be as prepared as possible.
This is why places like america have a CDC and protocols in place for hospitals and doctors to report anything that looks unusual. Luckily we have quick and cheap ways to now take a sample and sequence it’s whole genome, all of it’s DNA and this can make identifying or comparing any new infection that may appear much easier.
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Excellent question misszombie – the answer is YES. But how?
Let’s go back to 1300s AD when black plague killed ~ 150million people in Europe. Scientist suggest that the cause of black plague is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis – it could be another bacteria, doesn’t matter. Many diseases are caused by bacteria. (Small sidenote: only 1% of world’s bacteria cause diseases, most bacteria is our friend rather than a foe). Bacteria is a living organism, like plants, animals or humans. Unlike humans they don’t want to make more money or have a happy life, all they want is to “survive” by passing their genes on to next generations. Bacteria don’t have any hostility against humans and we are so lucky otherwise bacteria could wipe out all of humans less than a year. Bacteria sometimes need hosts to grow and reproduce itself. They don’t intentionally choose humans but if they happen to infect humans our immune system shows reaction to kill them. Some bacteria can avoid it by mutating into a more stronger form or mutating to be a stealth bacteria so that they can avoid getting caught by our immune system. When this happens, they can infect us and cause deaths.
Coming back to possibility for a illness to get to black plague proportions… Unfortunately there is already a growing problem which causes death of many patients in hospitals all around the world. It is known as hospital bacteria. Many people recover from deadly diseases like cancer, cardiovascular or even bad traffic accidents but you hear them they die due to hospital infection. The hospital bacteria is a quite tough one to kill and they are getting harder and harder to kill everyday because they grow resistant to many antibiotics. Would it reach to black plague level – we are trying our best to control them but they already cause many deaths…
Unfortunately we can’t blame hospital bacteria at all because they became so strong because of the mis-use of antibiotics by doctors. Here is the main difference between a doctor and scientist. Doctors save lives, yes but they have a limited knowledge – they can’t think like a scientist. They learn very hard skills which help them to operate humans and save them from various diseases or conditions but doctors do not think like a scientist they are like mechanics – they diagnose the problem and fix it, they don’t ask questions a lot- that’s why everything becomes a routine after a while. When penicillin was first invented it certainly was a big discovery – easiest way to kill bacteria (99.9%) What doctors didn’t think was what happened to remaining 0.1%, guess what they grew resistance and become stronger every day. Now we can’t handle them because hardly any antibiotic works on them… Don’t worry though, scientists are working very hard to find ways to keep the bacteria under control. But there is always a possibility for diseases to get to black plague proportion. Don’t mess with bacteria…
0