Since time out of mind human beings and microorganisms have been engaged in an accelerating arms race. Diseases have found novel ways to infect us and we have found novel ways to fight back. First we evolved genes that help us resist disease; much later we learned to use natural antibiotics produced by other living things and then to synthesize entirely new ones; ultimately we engineered vaccines to prevent diseases before they even happened.
Microorganisms have fought back. They evolved antibiotic resistance and they evolved to pass the genes that confer antibiotic resistance among themselves so they don’t have to wait for evolution to protect them. They might ultimately evolve to evade vaccination, but in the meantime they’ve found a short cut. By presenting a mild face, they’ve tricked some people into helping them propagate.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]There’s a name for those who advance the interests of disease causing microorganisms; we call them anti-vaxxers.[/pullquote]
There’s a name for those who advance the interests of disease causing microorganisms — like measles, pertussis and influenza — over the interests of human beings; we call them anti-vaxxers.
Can microorganisms control human behavior? Why not? Plants and animals already do it.
In the book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan asked an intriguing question:
What existential difference is there between the human being’s role in [a] garden and the bumblebee’s?
Don’t both act to improve the wellbeing of plants?
He observes:
Gardeners like me tend to think such choices are our sovereign prerogative: in the space of this garden, I tell myself, I alone determine which species will thrive and which will disappear…
What if that grammar is all wrong? What if it’s really nothing more than a self-serving conceit? A bumblebee would probably also regard himself as a subject in the garden and the bloom he’s plundering for its drop of nectar as an object. But we know that this is just a failure of his imagination. The truth of the matter is that the flower has cleverly manipulated the bee into hauling its pollen from blossom to blossom…
And we’re being manipulated by plants, too.
The fact that one of us has evolved to become intermittently aware of its desires makes no difference whatsoever to the flower … All those plants care about is what every being cares about on the most basic genetic level: making more copies of itself. Through trial and error these plant species have found that the best way to do that is to induce animals — bees or people, it hardly matters — to spread their genes. How? By playing on the animals’ desires, conscious and otherwise…
The book tells the story of four plants — apples, tulips, marijuana, potatoes — and the traits they have evolved to trick human beings into propagating them by fulfilling human desires for sweetness, beauty and altered consciousness, etc.
Animals manipulate us in similar ways. The dog offers loyalty, the cow offers milk and the chicken offers meat and eggs. In return, we propagate them — in far greater numbers and to a much wider geographical extent — than they could ever have managed on their own.
Arguably, no plant or animal been more successful in manipulating us into promoting its own interests than the microorganism yeast. In exchange for the intoxication and leavening properties it offers, we propagate yeast in industrial quantities.
Yeasts can be considered man’s oldest industrial microorganism. It’s likely that man used yeast before the development of a written language. Hieroglyphics suggest that that ancient Egyptians were using yeast and the process of fermentation to produce alcoholic beverages and to leaven bread over 5,000 years ago…
It is believed that these early fermentation systems for alcohol production and bread making were formed by natural microbial contaminants of flour, other milled grains and from fruit or other juices containing sugar… Over the course of time, the use of these starter cultures helped to select for improved yeasts by saving a “good” batch of wine, beer or dough for inoculating the next batch…
Human beings commercially produce three million tons of baker’s yeast alone each year. That’s a pretty big accomplishment for a pretty small organism.
At no point is there any intentionality on the part of the yeast or any of these plants and animals. But by offering us something we want, these organisms have convinced us to do their bidding.
Anti-vaxxers are now doing the bidding of disease causing microorganisms such as those that cause measles, whooping cough and influenza. If dogs offer loyalty, apples offer sweetness and yeast offers intoxication, what do the vaccine preventable organisms offer human beings? In the case of anti-vaxxers, it is the the unmerited ego boost that anti-vax belief provides. Anti-vaxxers imagine themselves as smart enough to see the truth that others miss, cynical enough to recognize the corporate self-dealing that others ignore, and powerful enough to control their health in the face of government efforts to harm them.
How do vaccine preventable bacteria and viruses aid anti-vaxxers in their delusions? By presenting a mild appearance in a substantial proportion of cases.
Why don’t we ever see anyone holding Ebola parties, seeking to have their children acquire natural immunity? Ebola is obviously so debilitating and deadly that even the most delusional anti-vaxxer cannot imagine that prevention is worse than the disease. No one is rushing to bring back polio, either, for the same reason, although it is only a matter of time before it returns.
But diseases like measles, whooping cough and influenza often present a mild face, lulling anti-vaxxers into the complacent belief that they aren’t harmful at all. If the diseases aren’t harmful then the risks of vaccination (real or imagined) seem unjustified. Therefore, anti-vaxxers are doing everything in their power to allow the unrestrained propagation of these diseases. Measles, whooping cough and influenza don’t have many friends, but they have enough anti-vax friends to allow them to come roaring back.
It’s too late for smallpox. Even anti-vaxxers couldn’t convince people that the vaccine was worse than the disease because smallpox was rarely mild. As a result, the disease was wiped from the face of the earth. If measles, whooping cough and influenza were to become more virulent, anti-vaxxers would be relegated to the dustbin of history, quickly recognized as the foolish, ignorant conspiracy mongers that they are. Then we would be free to extirpate measles and whooping cough, too, (though probably not influenza because it mutates too quickly).
The bottom line is that anti-vaxxers are doing the bidding of deadly pathogens because those pathogens present a mild face often enough to fool them. Anti-vaxxers aren’t educated; they’re gullible … and bacteria and viruses are taking advantage of that fact.
