Troika

[c9]

Knowing that many of my friends have different interests, I present several different items for comment:

1. This morning, when there's normally mindless pap, a local radio station accidentally allowed actual conversational debate to leak through: one DJ was defending his decision to never vaccinate his children, and the others were talking about how diseases used to wipe out thousands or millions every few decades, but vaccination has curbed this. His take was that "humans are the only species that does not allow nature to take its course," i.e. Darwinism. Thoughts?

2. The Pope has had a feeding tube inserted to help his caloric intake. a) would the reports have placed feeding tube in the headlines if Terry Schiavo hadn't taught us all the lingo? b) He is *so* not long for this world. Watch for the white smoke at the Vatican, kids.

3. Yesterday, school buses throughout large sections of Ontario north of London were delayed for two full hours. By fog. WTF?

Comments

[gueny.livejournal.com]

Hmm, your third paragraph makes sense as one explanation.

Nothing "changes" anything into a super-strain. Super-strains are a result of an upset in the microbial ecological balance. As such, members that ordinarily would have been out-competed (generally a genetic mutant), will instead, end up prospering. This is the basic principle behind super-strains that result as a product of antibiotic treatments. At the very least, this therapy is suspected of speeding up the process of bacterial succession for more virulent strains. These processes are a bit easier to measure, and in fact can be done through a simple lab experiement with a couple of agar plates over a period of a day or two.

From an ecological perspective: Generally, when you do something to mitigate the impact of one population or species, you risk giving an advantage to another population or species.

So there are few things that may come into play:

1. Introducing a vaccination into an organism may indirectly and unknowingly to us, target other unknown organisms, thus allowing them to uncharacteristically persist in the environment - not only in the 'closed' system of the individual, but also in the external environment. Of course, we do not become aware of negative impacts until a new pathogen is identified. And even then, we are unlikely to accurately and reliably trace its roots to be the consequence of vaccination.

Regardless, the end result is still a disease that will require some intervention in order for the organism to persist in it's environment. So I suppose, the argument is really moot one, when considering that the results will always be the same.

2. My database crashed for a project I'm working on before I got to point #2, so I was interrupted and now forget :(. I assure you that it was really smart though.

I think the arguments make theoretical sense, although in the end if there is a vaccination available for something I perceive to be a threat, I'm-a-gettin-it.

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Yes, or disadvantage to another population or species.

Like you said, if there is a flu pandemic then it would be smart to get the vaccine.