Do Infectious Microbes Cause Most Common Chronic Diseases (And Much Of The Again Process)?
Although it is presently fashionable for medical research to examine possible genetic and toxic causes for diseases (and for aging), evolutionary biologist Paul W Ewald thinks that a great many common diseases of currently unknown etiology are likely due to chronic, low level infections.
That is to say, Paul Ewald thinks that GERMS, not genes, are the cause of most common chronic diseases.
If a great many common diseases (like cancers, heart diseases and neurological diseases) do indeed turn out to be caused by infectious microbes rather than genes, then humanity stands a good chance of eradicating these diseases, by eradicating the infectious microbes that cause them.
However, for some reason, very little funding is allocated to examining the infectious causes of common chronic diseases — this area gets only a tiny fraction of the money allocated to genetic research.
This disparity of funding needs to be rectified.
Checking To See If Your Health Condition / Disease Is Linked To Any Infectious Microbes
If you have a health condition or disease (either physical or mental), and wondered if any research has linked your health condition to a microbial infection, then I have provided some ready-made Google search templates below, which you can use for this purpose: to rapidly check what associations your health condition has with a wide set of infectious microbes.
The Google search templates below cover the majority of common infectious microbes: including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoal parasites, and worm (helminth) parasites.
To perform a Google search on your particular health condition, start by clicking on the VIRUSES 1 link below, and in the search window that pops up, just replace the "XXX" with the name of your health condition or illness, and hit enter to search. This will Google search for articles that associate your health condition with any of the viruses included in this search. Then proceed to the second search: click on the VIRUSES 2 link, and repeat the same procedure with this next set of viruses. And so on, to all the other searches provided below (there are eleven searches in total).
When you have worked through all eleven of the Google searches provided below, you will have performed a pretty comprehensive search on the possible links your health condition has to a wide range of infectious microbes. Thus you should have some answers regarding whether your health condition has been linked, either tentatively or casually, to any infectious microbes.
Note that these Google searches are (as they stand) focused on PubMed listed articles.
PubMed Search Viruses:
• VIRUSES 1
• VIRUSES 2
• VIRUSES 3
• VIRUSES 4
PubMed Search Bacteria:
• BACTERIA 1
• BACTERIA 2
PubMed Search Fungi:
• FUNGI
PubMed Search Parasites:
• PROTOZOA
• WORMS 1
• WORMS 2
PubMed Catch-All Search:
• CATCH-ALL SEARCH
Notes On Searches
Note: within these Google search queries, the pipe symbol | is used as an abbreviation for the OR operator.
Note: Google searches are limited to 32 words in total.
Note: before you rush off to do these searches, you might want to first quickly check to see if your health condition and its associated microbes are already listed on this page.
What To Do With The Disease — Microbe Link Information You Find
Finding the microbes that are statistically linked to your health condition or illness can be useful, because:
• You might consider getting tested for these microbes, to see if you do have them yourself, and if so, to see how fierce the infection is.
• You may consider taking some appropriate anti-microbial drugs or herbs, as an experimental procedure to treat this infection, to see if this improves your symptoms. Though note that anti-microbials are not always available for every type of microbe. And remember, association does not automatically imply causation (see below), so you cannot know for sure that a microbe linked to your disease is actually the cause of it.
• You may find the info useful, just so you can read and learn more about the microbes associated with your health condition or illness.
• Use this information in contemplating the groundbreaking idea that a major part of aging and ill-health is likley caused by chronic low level microbial infections of all kinds.
Remember: Association Does Not Automatically Imply Causation
Just because a pathogen is associated with a disease, it does not automatically imply that the pathogen causes the disease.
There are two stages in medical research, when it comes to proving that an infectious microbe plays a causal role in a disease. The first stage is to demonstrate a statistical link or association between the infectious microbe and the disease (that is, show that patients with the disease have a higher prevalence of that microbe in their bodies, compared to healthy controls).
Finding such a link or association hints that the microbe may well cause the disease; but this statistical link does not prove causality, as the microbe may just be an "innocent bystander", that plays no causal role in the disease.
So once a statistical link has been established, the second stage in medical research involves figuring out how to prove whether the microbe causes the disease or not. Such definitive proof of causality is often hard to come by. Sometimes, researchers have acted as Guinea pigs in the service of science, and have introduced the microbe into their own bodies, to see if it precipitates the disease. However, this is not always advisable. So currently there are many diseases which we know are strongly linked to infectious microbes, yet we do not know for sure whether those microbes cause the disease.
Further Reading On Disease — Microbe Links
Paul W Ewald Says Germs, Not Genes, Cause Most Chronic Diseases
A New Golden Age of Medicine
List Of Human Diseases Associated With Infectious Pathogens
Role of Chronic Bacterial and Viral Infections in Neurodegenerative, Neurobehavioral, Psychiatric, Autoimmune and Fatiguing Illnesses: Part 1
Role of Chronic Bacterial and Viral Infections in Neurodegenerative, Neurobehavioral, Psychiatric, Autoimmune and Fatiguing Illnesses: Part 2
Note: I also posted this information (and search templates) on another forum here.
Edited by Hip, 24 August 2011 - 11:55 PM.
