Climate Change and Evolution Meet Human Behavior
Climate Change and Negligent Ecosystem Disruption likely have a greater adverse effect on human and environmental health than can be imagined.
Consider the 900,000 or more toxic chemicals that pervade our living environment, with perhaps just 80,000 or so slated for safety testing (at a predicted rate of about 7/year), and we are in fact setting the stage for the rapid evolution and emergence of new infectious diseases, ad infinitum.
The purpose of life seems to be to perpetuate life, which means by eating other things. In our case, being eaten by infectious agents makes us the nutritional source that perpetuates infectious diseases. This is especially the case, now that our well-evolved and protective immune system has become compromised by the immune-suppressive toxic chemicals in our living environment, all of which are provided by the collaborative forces of government and industry, an obvious force majeure.
No matter what we do, it all goes to sewage, then back to us in an endless Loop.
How do we discover and develop new antimicrobial agents to combat this new generation of resistant infectious agents? One way is to explore these same toxic environments for toxin-tolerant microbes that are natural antibiotic producers.
We cannot avoid the new and emerging generations of infectious diseases, so we must develop the next generation of antibiotics ahead of the wave. This new generation of infectious agents, especially the new and ever-emerging antibiotic-resistant infectious agents, cannot be avoided; they represent an unrestrained force of evolution, and we must address the crisis head-on.
Daniel Brooks* said the appearance of infectious diseases in new places and in new hosts, such as experienced by West Nile Virus and Ebola, is a predictable result of climate change. He warns that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the near future, as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible, but to which they have not been exposed previously.
The uncontrolled disposal of sewage sludge in our living environment brings humans into contact with new forms of pathogens as never before.
We are on it.
*Evolution in action: climate change, biodiversity dynamics and emerging infectious disease. Eric P. Hoberg , Daniel R. Brooks, Philosophical Transactions B, April 2015, Volume: 370 Issue: 1665. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0553 Published 16 February 2015.
Uncontrolled sewage sludge disposal in a State Forest; I am there!
Not at anyone's Agronomic Rate.
A certain few fungi tolerate the toxic mess.
What's in it? What Hormones? How did that get in there?
No one knows what's in it, or what it also produces while its in there.
It is unknowable.
New chemicals and new resistant forms of infectious agents evolve right in it, both in the sewage plants and in the great outdoors.
It even offers a Feather of Peace.
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