Viruses, Part II: Diseases and Cancer
Diseases, Cancer, and Medical Uses It has long been hard for people to accept that they can be hurt, or even killed, by something they cannot see. But this is exactly what viruses do and have always done; they evade our body’s immune system, hijack our cells to create more viruses, and have consequently caused epidemics throughout human history. More recently, we’ve recognized they can also cause cancers, as well as other changes to our very genomes that we have yet to fully understand the implications of. Smallpox: Possibly the oldest viral disease on record is smallpox, with accounts dating to 1100 B.C. in China and India. It made its way to Europe around 500 A.D., and then infamously followed the Europeans to the Americas in the early 1500s, destroying Native American populations. Because it is eradicated today, it can be hard to imagine just how difficult life with this disease was; of the people who caught it, up to forty percent died, mainly through damage to their heart, kid...