Posted on 03/12/2005 1:45:17 PM PST by Woliff
An interesting (but very sad) sideline... I'm reading a disturbing book re: Plagues and catastrophes as a result of God's justice. Its called Sent to Earth by Michael Brown, read it if you don't mind missing sleep.
I saw a documentary on PBS last year on the subject. The mechanism of infection appears to be the same for AIDS and the plague. I don't remember the details, but that's the reason why descendants of those immune from the plague are also immune from AIDS.
Oh thanks. I thought they knew this for sure.
Actually, there have been new studies saying that the 'black death' was likely not caused by bubonic and/or pneumonic plague. It moved too fast and was more in line with a hemmoraghic fever such as ebola. One such 'sweating sickness' did kill many in England. One of the many theories was that these diseases came out of the forests of Europe... which still existed at that time and were being slowly cleared. The same thing is true of Ebola and other hemorraghic fevers.
It is unlikely that rat fleas spread plague so far, wide and fast.
Europeans have pretty trashy genetics as people go, loads of different minor mutations in the population. Which is a good thing, as far as disease resistance goes.
Apparently the Bubonic plague started in China and was spread by trade to Europe.
And I thought it had been shown that there are no genetic differences between the races. </sarcasm>
Which makes an awful lot of white Americans have the same code.
No doubt those folks developed a resistance to various rat borne diseases.
The receptors the bacteria toxins and the virus both use to access a cell are the same in these diseases. So, if you have the special gene that confers immunity, you get immunity to both the offending bacteria and the offending viruses.
It has nothing to do with whether the attacking organism is a virus or a bacteria ~ the question concerns the cell receptors both the virus and bacteria use to gain access to the cell. Without that receptor, neither get in.
Bacteria do not need to "gain access to the cell". Most proliferate interstitially. you may be referring to the toxins generated by the bacteria - endotoxins and such.
Further to the HOOEY quotient of this baloney - most north americans are from euro descent - any such immunity would have travelled across the atlantic conferring some degree of AIDS "immunity" along with it.
No, this is all hogwash.
There was no need to say it twice.
Regarding the immunity conferred, it also works on cholera and diptheria.
The cholera immunity is probably the most useful. If you ever had a cholera vaccination and your arm turned black you probably have this natural immunity. If it didn't, use a condom, eh!
There's some debate about what the cause of the black death in the Middle Ages might have been, of course, but there's no doubt about relative death rates. Indo-European speaking people in Europe died at anywhere from 30% to 80%. Non Indo-European speakers in Norway saw only 10% die.
These people also have some genetic differences, most centered on genes that make it easier to live in the far North, and presumably to live among a large rodent population!
If you want to see the relative death rates take a look at Tuchman's "Through a Glass Darkly". I'm sure the charts are somewhere on the internet as well.
Oh, yes, the diptheria thing ~ if you have natural immunity you probably won't die from it ~ but you'll get really sick. My paternal grandmother caught it. Most of the rest of her large family also caught it. They all lived. Most of their neighbors died. They never did have any trouble with cholera although it was prevalent in that area.
One article on the internet says this natural immunity to a variety of pathogens is highest in Sweden. My guess is that it coincides with the same areas in Sweden that have the 15% diabetes melitus rate.
That's kind of the downside ~ may be fun to drink water out of the ditch, but doggone I hate having to give up sugar in my coffee, and then there's the loss of the mashed potatoes.
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