Bacteria

Apparently this war on germs has been a great success.
.
As all of the feared epidemic killers of the 19th century have been conquered.
.
Well most of them, because some of them are now making a come back.

Actually, the ideology of the germ has greatly exaggerated the role of the two great weapons of modern medicine, the vaccine and the antibiotic, in the demise of infectious disease.

According to Ivan Illich, "The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization."

Adult diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, polio, and typhoid fever show a similar pattern.
.
Which can be attributed more to an improvement in living conditions than to medical advances.

Nonetheless, medical propaganda would have us believe that the noble cause of "modern medicine" is to extend it to those backward parts of the globe still in thrall to such diseases.

Meanwhile in developed countries, we believe we can be even healthier by extending our vigilance with anti-bacterial soaps.
.
Flu vaccines every year..
.
Frequent medical check-ups and earlier screenings.

The campaign of extermination against germs has severe unanticipated consequences for our health.

Killed off along with pathogenic microbes are much of our beneficial intestinal flora.
.
Which interact with and modulate the immune system in complex ways that recent research is only starting to reveal.

Moreover, our native bacteria protect us by monopolizing the intestinal surface to deny competitors a foothold.
.
They even secrete bacteriocins and other chemicals that inhibit the growth of harmful species.

As in nature, when the internal ecosystem is destroyed, opportunistic species proliferate, such as pathogenic yeasts and bacteria.

We identify the "cause" of candidasis as a species of yeast.
.
But the real cause is a systemic disruption of body ecology.

The same is true of our forests, where widespread tree death has also been blamed on various fungi.

But why are the trees susceptible as never before?

The reason is the same as in the body.
.
Systemic toxicity and the disruption of ecosystems.
.
Reductionist thinking par excellence.
.
Look at a narrow problem.
.
Come up with a narrow solution.
.
Then wonder why there are so many unexpected and unintended consequences.
.
Deny like crazy that they have anything to do with what you have just done.
.
Then come out with new narrow products to treat the problem you have created.
.
And so it goes on.
.
Time for a new paradigm, reductionism has run its course.
.
 It is past it's sell by date for most things.
.
Time to look at the bigger picture first before making decisions about how to treat any local condition.
.
The world and everything in it are part of an amazing relationship and cannot be treated in isolation from each other.
.
Well they can be, but then you have the mess we are in now.
.
Shame we are so stubborn.