How did diseases come about through evolution; And how are they evolving currently?

Posted by Brandon Williams in Science and Society - Best on

Diseases came about throughout evolution largely from the results of microorganisms; these microorganisms are specifically called microbes. Microbes are microorganisms that cause disease or fermentation. At a point in time microbes were contained to certain locations, meaning that at a point of time they didn’t spread very much. When humans begin making the climb toward civilizations, by making long trips, creating long distance trade, and also exploring different geographic sections of the world. Microbes begin attacking them, so it’s safe to say, that through cultural expansion diseases have evolved. It is said that the spread of microbes modernly increased through the European Industrialization and colonization.



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406762ac.2

This lead to the antibiotic era, this was an era when antibiotics begin to develop. In this era at a point in time, antibiotics begin to be misused and overused. At that time they didn’t know that antibiotics were only effective against bacterial infections. So this did more harm than good, because by people overusing antibiotics, microbes  became smarter making immune to them. Not only did microbes become resistant they started creating strains that were more harmful. The the Antibiotic Era also led to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics used to treat very harmful infections, like the common cold, and influenza (flu). The overuse of antibiotics helped these infections and diseases become antibody resistant which is what scientist and doctors are dealing with currently. 

disease
disease

In modern society our way of dealing with these issues are by using vaccination, or by trying to cure them straight out. But by giving vaccinations for infections like diphtheria, chicken pox, polio, tetanus, and measles, we may be helping in the current situation, but at the same time producing strains of antibody resistant microbes. In theory this may be detrimental to our generations in the years to come. As far as scientist and doctors trying to cure diseases right from the start, there have been some issues following this as well. For example when scientist and doctors tried to stop the spread of malaria with using modern antimalarial medicine, the parasites that malaria contained, revolted against it, because it became immune to the medicine, but it also created more dangerous strands of parasites. This led to mutation of genes, which birthed even more harmful diseases such as Sickle Cell Anemia, Thalassaemias, Duffy Antigens, G6PD, and HLA and interleukin-4. Allow this is an example of just one example, this is an issue that follows the process of curing the most prominent diseases know to man, such as HIV/AIDS, and cancer. Bacteria is just becoming to smart...

 

In conclusion to put it simply as humans evolved with nature, so did microorganisms, and parasites. Which are still evolving as I write this blog. The real question is how will the evolution of smarter and more efficient humans lead to better engineering of preventive medicines?


Sources:

www.unmpress.com/more/0826330657.pdf

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/02/darwinian-medicine-understanding-disease-in-terms-of-evolution/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704454304575081613327728110.html

http://www.cdc.gov/MALARIA/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1224522/?tool=pmcentrez


 

 

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