Did you know???

Question

I saw on the health channel last night that there is a mutated gene from, scientists think, the survivors of the bubonic plague that prevents the people who have it from getting sick from most viruses. One man who has the gene, which has been isolated, did not get HIV even though a batch of blood he received was infected. Scientists are trying to learn from this to prevent epidemics. What I wonder is, what will happen if we cure everything or have a shot for everything. How are we going to have a life if there are too many people to feed, house, etc; when populations explode from all the advances in medicine and natures was of purging itself is taken away. What do you think? I think we won't die from disease- we'll die from starvation and friction between the masses.

The gene affected things on the cellular leval in such a way that the virus couldn't get through the receptor, it would just "bounce off" and couldn't enter the cell to infect it.

Oh yeah, it wouldn't matter what type of virus it was if they all just bounced off the receptor site.

Answer 1

yeah, i heard about it in one of my classes the other day. the bubonic plague was the cause of a bacteria - yersinia. it can cause pneumonia, infections and septicaemia - the pneumonic and septicaemic plague followed the bubonic plague. it can be cured by penicillin.

no, i personally dont think that we will cure everything. once you have given a drug for a certain disease, the bacteria or virus immediately start changing to avoid the drug either by changing the cell wall, or changing the penicillin binding site. there are other ways as well, such as, efflux pumps where the bacteria just pumps out the antiboitic or metabolises it. the other mechanism of resistance is that the bacteria changes it DNA genome which causes it to transcribe a different protein than what the antibiotic hydrolizes - 30S or 50S- and this causes the antibiotic to be ineffective or they just make an enzyme which takes up the receptor or hydrolyze the bacteria.

there are so many ways a bacterai can avoid the antibiotics and thats why doctors try not to misuse the antibiotic as the bacteria are constantly building up resisance to the treatment.

the guy whom you are referring to currently lives i nthe usa if i remember correctly, but was in europe at the time of the plague. he contracted it an the bacteria infiltrated his leucocytes, changing the genome. this is the reason why he cannot get infected, his cells' receptors were so dramatically changed thet the hivirus cannot retrotranscribe the dna to rna and make its own proteins.


PS. the same bacteria that caused the bubonic plague - yersinia is used to make biological weapons.

Answer 2

Actually, there is a chance that the circumstances you describe will lead to a declice in birth rates. In fact, most developed countries other than the fundamentalist-dominated U.S. are at level or even negative population growth. As conditions better, people tend to have fewer children and to put off childbearing for a longer time. Note that the greatest growth rates are usually in countries with depressed economies where disease, starvation, and violence are much more common than in the Western world. Advances often lead to a short-term increase in population, but there is a very real long-term prospect of a leveling off of population. As for natural winnowing: there will never be a shortage of natural disasters.

Answer 3

(Now I'm going to have to go look for that thing about the plague causing a mutation -- sounds fascinating. I guess once you survive that, anything else isn't so bad...)

You're right -- if we have a cure for every health problem, and can even make people live longer, but don't do a damn thing to curb population growth, we will be in BIG trouble. We're on the leading edge of that kind of problem now. We can treat diseases enough to keep people from dying before they reach adulthood and have children of their own, but we can't feed everyone (or aren't doing enough of what we CAN do for it to be effective), or provide enough clean drinking water, or enough decent living space, or find enough energy sources for all the technology that the increased population requires... We can't make a vaccine against malnutrition.

Answer 4

Very interesting. I think It would better not to have epidemics and try to control the population growth. Besides, new ways of producing food and housing could be invented.
but the other posters are right, the viruses do mutate and it's hard to keep up

Answer 5

nature has a way of preventing the population from expanding too much. If it happened that we were able to find a cure for everything currently known to infect or afflict the human race, another bunch of viruses and illnesses would evolve to take their place.

Answer 6

Disease and viruses change. New ones will keep coming and we will have to delvop new antidotes.Virses change the protein coats they have around them so even though its still the same viruse the old shot won't do anything. Plus diseases are not the only thing that kills us.Still will be dying of old age, car crashes, homicide, suicide etc.

Answer 7

Diseases will continue to mutate as well, you will never eliminate all diseases. at the present one of the biggest problems in health care is staph infections. The staph germs have mutated to where they are no longer effected by medications. This will continue.Disease is natures way of clearing excess.

Answer 8

i heard about that gene, too. i doubt it'll lead to the extinction of disease, though. for starters, pathogenic organisms mutate all the time and might mutate their way around that long-time survivor gene, and then of course people that gene itself might well mutate again. if, howevere, we do ever find a cure for all disease, yes, it'll be hunger and violence that'll kill people.

Answer 9

it will never happen. nature mutates right down to the cellular level all the time. there will always be something we can't cure. but if that did happen we would definitely have to look to outerspace to put our people.

Answer 10

that will be nature's new form of population control: those who aren't strong enough to survive with little food will die. It's the same thing as darwinism, really.