 |
|
|
 |
opinion
Germs are us
As the
Foot and Mouth Disease crisis in Europe illustrates, we're still
entangled in a fight against nature we can't win, writes Victor
Paul Borg
Britain, followed by the rest of Europe, is waging war. The enemy
has all the qualities of an alien invader, and the measures to fight
it have reached levels of desperation. Suffice it to report that
the UK government has cordoned off the countryside for both farmers
and ramblers. Horse races, too, have been cancelled. The police
have set up checkpoints at strategic crossroads, and all day they
stop cars and fumigate their tyres with lethal disinfectant. Lorries
and freight trucks are searched for the offensive invader. Many
farms have been evacuated and corralled with yellow police tape.
Every country in Europe is searching the luggage of every tourist
originating from the UK and confiscating offensive meats. At borders,
cars and trucks have to drive through pools of disinfectant.
Nick Brown, the English Minister of Agriculture, has called the
invasion ‘a national tragedy' and Tony Blair emerges ruffled
every day from ‘crisis cabinets' There is even talk of postponing
the national election. News bulletins in the UK are dominated by
images of funeral pyres burning the aliens and their hosts: in the
first two weeks of the invasion 35,000 cattle have been slaughtered
and cremated. The invader is the microscopic virus that causes Foot
and Mouth Disease, and although Europe will win this round of battle,
the world will never win the war.
Foot and Mouth Disease creeps up on two-hoofed animals such as sheep,
horses, pigs, cows and so on, and at its onset, blisters mushroom
in the animal's mouth and feet. The blisters pop and the animal
eats painfully, hobbles on its raw feet, develops a temperature,
and pregnant females may abort their foetuses. Yet, if allowed to
run its natural course, the animal's immune system cures the disease.
Meat and milk remain untainted. Humans are not known to pick up
the disease. Also, vaccination can shield the animals from future
outbreaks. Which makes you wonder: why does most of the world pursue
a campaign of eradicating the virus? Spurred by a vision of cosmetically
perfect, aseptic meat chops on supermarket shelves, and untouchable
economies of scale, the meat industry's wisdom is that exterminating
the virus is the best long-term policy. But it's a policy based
in the premise of arrogance that we can fumigate undesirable parasites
into oblivion, extinction even. We can't, as the current and previous
outbreaks in the UK and elsewhere prove.
New York-based science writer Carl Zimmer, who recently published
a book about parasites called Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World
of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, has written: ‘Truthfully,
total eradication [of parasites] is just a dream. They are so resourceful
and abundant.'
Day after day we faithfully chase a vision of a sterile world where
all germs will be banished. In this artificial world, a germ that
slips past our defences finds an abundance of hosts and no competition.
This is part of the reason why diseases that would otherwise snipe
randomly and locally flare up into epidemics. Another part of the
reason is that epidemics spread when populations of plants, animals
or humans live in close density and threaten to overrun the environment.
Nature's defence mechanism ensures that when a species' population
grows beyond a certain threshold of density, another species propagates
profusely as it takes advantage of the availability of abundant
food (the overpopulated host). Eventually, a balance works itself
again. Call it ecological logic.
The web of life flourishes on symbioses. Species' relationships
evolved to either scratch each other's back or eat one another.
For both reasons, we have to live together, and the symbiotic balance
is diverse and delicate, bleak and beautiful, brutal and kind. It's
that complexity that makes life fragile, mystic and wonderful, perhaps
the reasons why we are all philosophers at heart.
Yet we have mostly turned nature's logic on its head. We have replaced
diversity with monocultures. We poison the soil and water to kill
undesirable and deadly parasites. We beat nature in submission.
And we ignore the fact – the ecological logic – that when
we flip part of the natural weighing scale, we also rock the part
under our feet. One way that is happening is that in a sterile world
our immune system is turning on ourselves. Studies comparing sections
of societies that live in sanitary conditions (such as people in
most of the western world) to those that live surrounded by squiggly,
mucky germs have shown that the incidence of allergies only shows
up in the former mostly. It's easy to understand why: co-evolution
with parasites has honed our immune system to keep those parasites
at bay, and suddenly, with fewer germs to fight, our immune system
is overreacting, triggering a repertoire of allergies.
Whether it's allergies, epidemics or the spectre of bacteria that
are evolving resistance to antibiotics (currently a hellish medical
scenario), perhaps it's about time we start living by nature's logic.
In the case of Foot and Mouth Disease, this might mean smaller,
non-intensive farms, where animals are reared, slaughtered, and
sold locally. Also, organic farming which works by extending the
ecological logic. That way, Foot and Mouth Disease will survive
perpetually but diminutively to the point where its effects are
largely insignificant. The added value is healthier food. I am simplifying
things here but you get the gist: a stance of management inspired
by nature's logic.
We are the most successful parasites, but also the most careless.
An intelligent parasite knows that if you kill off your host you're
got nowhere to live – and yet, by our relentless overindulgence
on nature, the way we're destroying nature and subduing our symbiotic
neighbours, that is exactly what we're doing. At this rate, chances
are that the Foot and Mouth Disease virus will outlive the human
species.
victor@borg.tf
|
|
|
