if hypothetically there was a disease that was good in some way (made you feel happy but not in an insaine way… or a STD that increased your pheromone output or… whatever) would we ever discover it?
I am pretty sure no one would EVER go to the doctors saying “boy I was feeling happy and my joints hurt less than ussual, can you check me out” and I know there aren’t doctors going through blood samples checking out the function of the millions of viruses and bacteria they see, especially if its not super wide spread (as common as west nile or something).
might there be possitive diseases? maybe not in humans but an STD that overloaded some sort of chemical to attract mates or something would not seem overly unlikely.
Well, the blood cell changes caused by sickle-cell anemia make the person more resistant to malaria. But that’s a genetic change, not really a “disease”.
And it’s common for a person with an infected appendix to be in great pain from this, and then to have the pain suddenly stop and they feel much better. But that’s a sign that the appendix has just burst all over their insides, and unless they have surgery and lots of antibiotics real quick, they will soon be dead.
Not exactly good diseases, but the closest I could think of.
Callipygiosity. The victim gets lovely, splendid buttocks. Side effects include egregiousness in others, drunkenness from generous strangers buying the victim drinks, traffic accidents in the victim’s vicinity, and in a few cases, careers in show business.
Studies have shown that callipygiosity may be hereditary. It may also be related to frequent contact with stair-climbing devices. Demographic studies of possible links to the use of high heeled shoes are inconclusive; the results, frankly, were all over the chart. Extensive, long term studies are under way.
I forgot the term or name of the guy who it was named after but it was qualified as a disease for some reason. I guess it is now called a Photographic memory. There was an earthquake back in the day when people wore sandals in a large building where people were having a festival. Only a few people survived. Some guy identified all the bodies because he remembered what they all wore. I’m not 100% on this but I heard it somewhere back in college.
-M
Yes and no. If they existed, we probably wouldn’t know about them, simply because we haven’t looked. You generally don’t start looking for microbes in the body unless there’s some symptom that you think is caused by one. But if we did start looking, we could find them. It’s a matter of “no one’s bothered” rather than “they can’t be detected.”
Athough, just to prove myself wrong, there are a fair number of viruses that have been found that appear to be neutral. They don’t do anything for us or hurt us, as far as we know. They were just found by accident when researchers were looking at unexplained diseases.
If they were viruses, they would have to be very specific in the way they target the host DNA - it wouldn’t be good enough to just splice in their own DNA any old where (as I understand is pretty much the case with pathogenic viruses), they would have to insert specific genes in specific places (as well as inserting whatever was necessary for their own propagation).
Yes, but surely by natural selection they surely would “find” the right genes to work on. I can’t see why beneficial viruses wouldn’t be far more successful than non-beneficial ones. Though perhaps it’s just far simpler to evolve into a mean virus.
For the virus, it is more beneficial for the virus to be able to hijack the cellular machinery, plundering the local resources to create mutliple copies of itself (probably to the extent that the cell can no longer function properly, but who cares?).
Long-term survival of the host isn’t as high on the list of selective criteria as are massive-scale reproduction and ease of transmission/availability of new hosts.
What about symbiotic relationships between a host and a bacteria (i.e. to aid in digestion etc.). Would these be considered as disease, or is a disease defined by the fact that it is harmful?
If a disease is defined by the fact that it’s harmful, then no, of course there aren’t any beneficial diseases. But I suppose one might define a disease as being abnormal, in which case digestive bacteria would be ruled out.
Syphillis can cause euphoria. In “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat”, the author tells a (true) tale of an old woman who had the disease and was rendered very happy and energetic by the beginning stages. They halted the disease through treatment and she stayed that way.
“…some Retroid Agents are implicated in disease via insertional mutagenesis, while others have been found to encode proteins essential to mammalian reproduction or provide regulatory sequences for host cell processes.”
Hey Mangetout and jjimm-
This doesn’t relate directly to the OP, but do you know what genes exist in the highest copy number in the human genome? Answer: reverse transcriptase. Where did they come from? Retroviruses (and also endogenous duplication events).
Source: Matt Ridley’s very entertaining “Genome” (or was it “The Red Queen”?).
Funny, I had a professor theorize exactly that about certain STDs. It could have some merit - increased pheromones could increase sex drive and help to spread the disease.
I would say CowPox is a good disease, since it makes you immune to other more destructive Pox viruses.
But the cowpox viruse itself does no good. It’s not like it infects you and makes you feel happy and bouncy. It gives you nasty pustules on the skin, in fact. The conferred immunity from smallpox is a rather indirect effect, IMO.
Mitochondria are a disease, an invading organism which eventually became symbiotic, but which still has it’s own DNA and which still reproduces by fission. But they let eucaryotic cells metabolize oxygen.
Same with chloroplasts: all plant cells are green because they’re infected with symbiotic blue-green algae, and the “chloroplasts” have their own DNA and reproduce separately.
Hey, how about a “reverse disease,” a cure that kills? Your cells can’t live long without mitochondria, and they’re sensitive to certain toxins. If your “infection” of mitochondria was wiped out, the “cure” would kill you in a few days.
Me, I wouldn’t be suprised if cells are full of symbiotic viruses which carry out essential tasks (sort of like mitochondria: millions of years of domestication could change viruses into essential cellular machinery.) What machinery would evolve from viruses? How about inter-cell communication molecules, like hormones, but carried inside a virus coat, and injected into cells’ particular RNA or DNA spots prepared for them?
How 'bout fruit, tree trunks, flowers, and Fall leaves?
Considering the time scales involved, I think it’s ridiculous at this point to call mitochondria, chloroplasts, or Human Endogenous Retroviruses “diseases.”
It’s not the time scale though. If mitochondria had evolved into their present state within a few decades, the argument wouldn’t changed. Instead the issue involves the degree of individuality: is a host/symbiote a single being, even if the host and symbiote have largely separate reproduction?
Now retroviruses being part of the host cell’s DNA, that makes them less of a symbiote and more like a structural element. Even so, their status is fuzzy since they evolved separately and then became entwined.
As for diseases, it depends on our definition. If we define “diseases” as being maladies, then there can be no such thing as a good disease. If we define diseases as being living things with their own genes and reproduction, then organelles are still diseases as long as they have some separate DNA. Adjust your mental filters, and you can perceive living cells as being nothing BUT a collection of beneficial diseases which interact.
So where does “colony of symbiotes” end, and “single organism” begin? Much of it depends on our intent of the moment; whether it aids us more to see the separate interacting elements, or whether it helps more to ignore the parts and watch the whole animal.