Paul Ewald's Evolution of Infectious Disease

Following is a backchat of the current treatment of human immunodeficiency virus and the onset of full-blown aid, the proportional effectiveness of these treatments and other possible strategies against the disease.

After a sketch look back at the development of the germ conjecture of disease, Ewald concludes with a look at emerging pathogens and the need for an evolutionary approach to combating these threats. He stresses the importance of evolutionary epidemiology as a way to leap from what is the response to possible epidemic disease to what ought to be the approach to natural processes and social practices in traffic with diseases themselves.

This book is an important attempt to persuade medical researchers to charge their efforts in the treating of lethal human pathogens toward an evolutionary epidemiology and away from the completing approach of Darwinian medicine. It seeks to answer the question: Can evolutionary principles help to understand why some parasites cause distasteful disease epoch others are nearly always highly mild? Can it help to understand implications of this resolution for the coming(prenominal) of the health knowledges, in theory and in practice (7)? Ewald attempts to station circumstances that favor evolution toward any level of noisomeness: extremely benign to lethal. ontogenyary epidemiology focuses on the spread of disease, while Darwinian medicine focuses much on

Ewald posits that only through protected sex and the drop-off of the number of sexual partners--in essence, only through education close the temper of disease and its causes--is there any hope of defeating it. The morbific response to biomedical strategies indicates the virus has a rapidly evolving susceptibility to alter its genetic structure and chemical composition in order to bypass any vaccines or antigens which medical science can hope to concoct (150-155).

As before, Ewald cont wind ups that by reparation behavior and social structures a long-term solution depart supply itself: an evolutionary transformation of HIV into a more benign pathogen. This appears to be the main thrust and purpose for Evolution of Infectious Disease.

Every chapter that precedes the examination and treatment of HIV and AIDS is a careful preparation for the reader in soul the evolutionary nature of pathogens and the effective resolutions arrived at for their treatment. In apiece case, Ewald proposes ways to avoid transmission of the pathogen which have been proven effective. from each one in turn of events leads to his eventual solution for the problem of HIV transmission. The solution he proposes will, of course, save lives in the future moreover can do nothing to cure the disease in current carriers. Ewald has clearly shown that efforts to do so will end only in failure.

From here Ewald springboards into a discussion of the nature of vector-borne (example: mosquito-borne) viruses, vertical transmission, and the evolution of virulence among pathogens. He relies on studies of historically the most lethal pathogens to prove his points: specifically, typhus, malaria, and yellow fever. He shows that incomplete anti-bacterial drugs nor vaccines have been as effective through the ages at cut back the toll taken by these pathogens as the simple convenient of better housing, which in turn reduces pest infestation, which in turn reduces the possibility of infection by vector-borne parasites. Ewald's hypo
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