Disease as our Ally


	Disease as our Ally

Djiezes

4-8-2007 3:57 PM

467 views

tags:

disease, health, evolution, sex, reproduction, genetics, biology, evolutionary biology, zuk, science

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/91514a03-72d8-4886-9eaa-d2917c887ade/7E039BDE-BBEF-450D-B47A-A4DB8A1F91CC/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.physorg.com/news95002406.html" href="http://www.physorg.com/news95002406.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.physorg.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.physorg.com/news95002406.html"><H1>Disease can be our ally, not just our enemy, says evolutionary biologist</H1></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.physorg.com/news95002406.html"><DIV>According to Zuk, the role of disease, once seen as a whole, is not always scary. "Disease is like the constant companion humans have had since the beginning of time, evolving right along with us, shaping us as much as we shape it," she said. "We need disease to function."
</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.physorg.com/news95002406.html"><DIV>To underscore her point, Zuk advises that we understand the importance of disease in our lives by considering how gravity has shaped our evolution. "Gravity makes us break our bones when we fall and our body parts droop with age, but in a weightless environment we don’t function very well either," she said.  "Like it or not, we evolved with gravity, and we evolved with disease."
</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.physorg.com/news95002406.html">A sexually produced baby, however, has an entirely new set of genes to outwit the diseases that surround us.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/7E039BDE-BBEF-450D-B47A-A4DB8A1F91CC/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>