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Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Starting To Die Off
Dr_Ken writes with a quote from Scientific American:
"The human body has some 10 trillion human cells—but 10 times that number of microbial cells. So what happens when such an important part of our bodies goes missing? With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction. In many of the world's larger ecosystems, scientists can predict what might happen when one of the central species is lost, but in the human microbial environment—which is still largely uncharacterized—most of these rapid changes are not yet understood. 'This is the next frontier and has real significance for human health, public health and medicine,' says Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, each new generation in developed countries comes into the world with fewer of these native populations. 'They're actually missing some component of their microbiota that they've evolved to have,' Foxman says."
Maybe, but you wouldn't be real happy if I cut off one of your legs (That is, maybe they are disappearing due to factors that are sort of external to 'ideal' functioning of our current bodies).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Our "average lifespan" has been increasing because we're eliminating infant mortality, not because most people only lived to some ridiculously low age.
Or we are not considering abortion as infant mortality anymore.
Obviously the USA - whether they knew it or not - is 100% to blame. We should tax them and redistribute the wealth to those less fortunate to make up for it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers