Curated Paper 2- Colton Koch

 

Curated Paper 2

            In high school, I got to take a course that is an introductory course to the medical field and all the different careers and specialties within it. One of my good friends in the class has a father who is a pathologist. Because of this, he was selected to give a presentation on pathology. He collected dozens of photographs from his dad showing different diseases and diagnosis. I was incredibly fascinated by how small changes that can only be seen under the microscope could cause serious complications and unfortunately for some, death.

            Growing up there would be random times when the term monocultures would turn up. While I was a teenager, I watched a video about why do bananas taste so different from their candy favoring counterparts. This is because the bananas that we grow today are a completely different strain from the ones that were being grown in the early 1900s. The bananas back then were the Gros Michel variety, and they had a taste similar to that we find in candy like laffy taffy. They were grown in huge monoculture planation bananas around the world for years. This was until the 1950s when a fungus that causes Panama Disease infected the plantations. This killed all the harvest and essentially made the Gros Michel banana commercially extinct. This caused the banana industry to switch to the now used Cavendish banana which is immune to the Panama Disease causing fungus. There are still concerns from scientists today about the next disease-causing extinction of another species of bananas, because we continue to produce them on large monoculture plantations.

            In my Microbiology class, we talked extensively about different plant fungi and how they cause diseases. We talked about plant rust which causes growth retardation and causes unsightly brown and red dots to appear on the leaves. This decreases the marketability and amount that farmers can sell their products. However, there are some fungi that we use and benefits the farmers. There is a type of fungus that grows on corn and in Mexico instead of destroying it and burning fields like they may in the United States the farmers eat it. In Mexico, this is called huitlacoche and it is a delicacy that is eaten in tacos and other dishes. A nonedible example is that there is a fungus that causes hypertrophy in plants and especially trees. This causes a large burl to form on the tree, and many woodworkers love this wood due to the intricate grain patterns. This means that objects crafted from burl wood can fetch significantly higher prices than a similar object made from ordinary grain wood.

            During my Evolution course, we spoke on different adaptation strategies that are used by various viruses. If a virus is evolving in an area of low population density, it will evolve to have a high transmission rate and a low mortality rate. We see the inverse effect when it evolves in a high population density area where there is a relatively lower transmission but a much higher level of mortality. There are so many things that pathogens have to consider when they infect a host. Some will be in the host for years before there are symptoms of infection. The pathogen will wait in an “inactive” form until the conditions are just right to multiply and infect other hosts.

            As a kid, I would play the game Plague inc. so much during my free time. The premise of the game was to develop a disease to a level high enough to infect all humans and eventually kill everyone. To do this you have to create new strains that are increasingly more contagious while also increasing resistance to drugs, heat, and the cold. One of the most important elements to winning was providing different ways of transmission. You can create a pathogen that is spread by water, air, blood, rats, livestock, birds, and many more. Each one of these had its perks but also downsides to it. The main strategy that I would use was to create a highly infectious disease, but it would not kill anyone, because once it becomes fatal the scientists would start working on a cure. You would wait until late in the game when everyone is infected and then you would increase the lethality so that everyone would eventually die from the disease before a cure.

            Gene therapy, I believe, is the next great element of the pharmaceutical industry. We can either through gene editing provide ways to eliminate different diseases such as HIV or AIDS. We could also provide specific medications and methods that are suited best for our genes. With this we could treat infections and diseases far more effectively. However, there are major ethical situations that become prevalent to the argument for or against gene editing. In Pre-AP biology in high school, my class watched the 1997 film Gattaca. This movie is set in the dystopian future where scientists through gene editing have created the “perfect” human. They talk about how the best athletes are geniuses and lack ailments that are also found in the unedited humans. Unfortunately, this means that humans conceived the traditional way are considered inferior and are not given the same treatment. Gene editing while beneficial to eliminating diseases and pathogens can create increased discrimination against those who are unable to afford the treatment.

Many times, our body doesn’t need extensive treatment. We have an immune system that is easily capable of preventing and stopping different pathogens. This is where ayurveda comes back into play. We can return our bodies to a balance and then have it fight the imbalance that is brought on by these pathogens. While shadowing a physician, he showed me some of the awards that he received over the years. Two of the awards he was most proud of were “Highest Patient Satisfaction” and “Lowest Amount of Medication Prescribed.” What made these awards increasingly impressive was the fact that he won both in the same year. Many physicians will only listen to a patient for a couple of minutes before prescribing a medication and moving on to the next appointment. The physician that I shadowed would listen to the patient and their needs before coming to a decision on any prescribed medications that they may need. He found that many did not need extensive doses but only need to make minor changes to their lifestyle.

In recent years, concern about over prescription of antibiotics has become increasingly more mainstream. Many pathogens have become drug resistant to simple antibiotics like penicillin. This in turn makes the drug ineffective to kill the bacteria and can return medicine to a dark age of being unable to treat these diseases. We have come up with drugs of last resort such as Vancomycin which are used in dire circumstances where the disease is resistant to all previous treatments.

Pathogens are going to be a regular part of our daily lives forever. We need to learn how to avoid their devastating effects by limiting the use of monocultures. We also need to change our method of prescribing medications and increasing our use of ayurveda in medicine. Finally we need to increase research into gene editing and its ethical applications to increase our resistance to different pathogens and diseases.