Posted on 10/15/2015 4:54:02 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
It's nearly 50 years since the US landed men on the moon, but Americans are still dying from a disease that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages. Why hasn't the US eradicated the plague?
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Yeah, it is a pretty dumb question.
“i understand that the plague is not only very rare in the USA, but relatively easily treated, and cured. we have bigger fish to fry.”
It isn’t the current form of the plague which is worrisome. Researchers recently discovered what made the plague deadly enough to wipe out a third of all humans on the Earth and more. It turns out that there is a single gene which gets turned on every so often that makes the plague super destructive. It is only a matter of time before this gene switch will take place in the wild again. When it does so, a single organism is capable of rapidly infecting whole human populations in days. Given the modern transportation systems, another of these super-plagues could begin the destruction of more than half of all human beings on the Earth before quarantines can stop the spread of the disease.
Agreed. The plague is an old-world disease. My point is more general: We will be seeing many more disease outbreaks now that there are no border controls.
As you know, Ellis Island had health inspectors. They were able to catch at least some problems.
Fleas....it’s the fleas..(I think)...
Probably for the same reason it hasn’t “eradicated” influenza, measles and other infectious diseases. Actually, however, even if plague hasn’t been eradicated, it’s been brought under control to the extent that it’s extremely rare, and never the result of poor sanitation, malnutrition and the proliferation of the species that carry it.
Agenda 21 - they might need it, some day.
There are thousands more cases of debilitating LYME disease in the country and yet almost nothing is being allotted to fight that.
What occured in the past was fixed in the past. Currently, the diseases are brought in from the outside, just like before, but by a different set of people who didn't fix their problem in the past.
Think again. See this prior FreeRepublic post and go to the source article.
The Mutant Genes Behind the Black Death
Quanta Magazine ^ | 10/6/15 | Carrie Arnold
Posted on ;PM by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3346880/posts
Once this bactria changes a gene or two again as it has in the past, it could get out of control and almost immediately produce yet another pandemic far beyond the mortality experienced by all the past human plagues combined.
We need the plague. It is natures way of keeping the surpluss population down.
Well how about this one. For the last 50 years we have spent untold 100’s of Billions on Cancer research and have no cure or even a vaccine. Why is that?
Think about just who would lose out if there was something to control or eradicate cancer. Cancer is Big Business and without it a lot of Doctors, Treatment Centers, Hospitals, Etc., would be out of business.
I no longer contribute any monies to any of these charities that promote cancer research as I don’t know where the money is going. If you look at these big outfits their expenses are unreal, and look at what these people who run these places make in salary and benefits.
After 50 plus years of research we should be a lot further along than we are.
Because the disease is endemic everywhere but Australia. It is a problem for the United States because it is also endemic in the United States, and the United States cannot escape the consequences of a new outbreak of the Black Death in the Old World or the New World.
Because when you can’t stop human beings from jumping the border from Mexico, how you gonna keep the rats out?
Up in the San Gabriels there are BLM campsites with warning signs not to fuss with rodents, because some are plague carriers.
To eliminate plague you’d either eliminate the rodents, or somehow prevent them from getting close to people.
Eradicated? They elected a plague twice!
I'm given to understand that when the Great Plague hit Europe, it was during a time of suddenly-colder-and-wetter weather.
(as an aside, apparently induced by a sudden dearth of sunspots)
We have prairie dogs.
Credit where credit is due:
In the 1850's there was a Plague outbreak in San Fransisco's Chinatown.
It was detected early on by a local physician, who promptly reported it to City Hall, and recommended a rat catching program, quarantine, and general clean up of the area.
The city fathers refused to acknowledge that there was Plague in their fair city. It festered until the problem could no longer be ignored, and finally a cleanup of Chinatown was instituted.
But by then Plague had spread from the rats to the ground squirrel population. Now one can be exposed to the Plague anywhere in the western US.
Feel free to draw parallels to any more recent plagues...
“Well how about this one. For the last 50 years we have spent untold 100s of Billions on Cancer research and have no cure or even a vaccine. Why is that?”
You are basing your conclusions upon a gross misunderstanding of about what cancer is and the forms of medicine that can treat cancer. A vaccine is a weaker form of an infectious disease organism that can be used to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies capable of destroying those malicious infectious organisms. Cancer is not an infectious organism, so there is no cancer organism to be prepared in a weaker form to produce a vaccine.
Instead, cancer is a medical condition where the body’s own cells begin to grow abnormally and can spread the malformed cells to other parts of the body. When this incorrect cell growth reaches a point where they affect critical bodily functions, health can be impaired or death can result. Because there are so many different types of cells which can undergo cancerous cell growth as a result if still countless different reasons ranging from exposure to natural and artificial radiation, exposures to carcinogenic chemicals, environmental conditions, and natural cellular mutations, each type of cancer must be researched for its own treatment and cure. This is why there is a vast research effort underway, because there are a multitude of different types of cancers and potential avenues of finding treatments and cures for each kind of cancer.
You should also note that it is untrue to say there is no cure for cancer. There are some forms of cancer where all of this research has finally discovered ways of treating and even stopping the cancerous cell growth.
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