Picking up on my last article (October 2014) I thought to try and bring some structure into this array of allies and invaders of our very own galaxy – the body.
Those long-nosed, cylinder-shaped, curly-bodied, hundred-legged beings can infect us from the inside or via “intergalactic travel” as it is mostly the case. The smallest of our enemies the prions reached fame through mad cow disease which still looms over generations of consumers of hamburgers.
They are the zombies of infectious diseases, non-living beings which persuade proteins in our brain to act the same way they do, thus accumulating rubbish which can’t be cleared. Eventually all this rubbish increasingly blocks the pathways of the brain, causing dementia and death.
Viruses have no soul! I am saying that because they, too, are very special beings and unfortunately very common ones. The majority of infections are due to their attacks, just think of respiratory tract infections and diarrhea. Viruses have a command center, whether they are living beings is disputed. They are like computer hackers; they exist of nothing else but encapsulated reproductive knowledge, which forces the hard working cells of the body to produce many copies of the original, which release themselves continuing to infect more body cells.
Most childhood illnesses are caused by viruses, measles for example, which still kills 150.000 children each year and leaves millions disabled. Antibiotics do not help against any of the viruses, and so called antivirals only exist for HIV, the Herpes- group illnesses, and hepatitis C, the only illness which can be cured with antivirals. Treatment is difficult, because the medicines can attack the virus only outside the cells when it is inactive. Furthermore the HIV virus becomes quickly resistant to antivirals. Building up resistance however is not a deliberate act, but follows the laws of evolution: a faulty copy suddenly does not respond to treatment, thus having an advantage over its comrades in arms which vanish.
Vaccinations are an effective protection against invaders, trouble is, that our immune system is not designed to recognize the enemy, but only its coat. If an enemy changes the coat quickly like the flu virus vaccinations are not effective in medium and long term. At this point I feel it only fair to sound praise to our own army, the immune system, which over hundreds of thousands of years has served us exceptionally well. Fungi are the next group of invaders. Fortunately we are not very good growers of mold apart from thrush and athlete´s foot, but God forbid, if you really do (with the exception of aspegillosis). Bacteria, with one of its subgroup called bacilli, are single cells which have their own metabolism.
Unlike plants and animals they do not have a nucleus, which is the switchboard of a cell. Their switchboard floats freely within the rest of the content. They harm us by digesting resources, producing waste and toxins and reproducing by dividing themselves into two – in ideal conditions every 20 minutes. Antibiotics kill them quickly, however the body´s own cleaning mechanisms need time to restore normality. The last group of invaders, apart from the already visible intestinal parasites with their microscopically small eggs, is the protozoa, single cell organisms which are exactly organized like the cells of plants and animals. This group is quite diverse, with only malaria and giardia playing a role in the northern hemisphere.