 |
| I found this picture at denverlibrary.org |
The interview was with Dr.
Martin Blaser, Director of the
NYU Human Microbiome Program, Professor of Microbiology at New York University
School of Medicine, author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of
Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues. He comes from the
world of medicine, and he has written a book about a possible coming apocalypse.
The mid-show guest was Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks, and author of World
War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, The
Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead,
and a graphic novel, The
Harlem Hellfighters (with illustrator Caanan White). He comes from
the world of books and Hollywood, and he has written a book about a fictional zombie
apocalypse.
Dr. Martin Blaser wants to alert us to the dangerous
consequences of the overuse of antibiotics. We probably all already know that bacteria are
becoming resistant to antibiotics limiting our ability to control disease. The
new, and even scarier information is that the good bacteria that humans need to
survive has also been affected—reduced in number, changed, made less diverse. Dr.
Blaser posits that the changes to the human microbiome are responsible for the rise of obesity, asthma, diabetes, and even certain kinds
of cancer.
Today I read a story in the
newspaper which claimed a link between autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis,
and the apocalypse in the human intestinal tract—changes in the symbiotic mircobiota
residing in the gut. Here’s a fun fact: These microbiota outnumber the body’s
own cells 10 to 1.
What does this have to do with
zombies? The answer to that comes in a recent episode of Through the Wormhole
with Morgan Freeman. This show likened zombies to rabid animals. Imagine a microbe
which is airborne like the flu, and like the flu incubates, leaving the
infected person symptom-free for a few days. Imagine further that unlike the
flu, this disease does not send us to our beds, but instead turns us into a wild
enraged animal, like a dog with rabies.
The people infected with this new
rabies-like disease would act like the zombies of fiction. The epidemic would
suddenly erupt world-wild becoming even more widespread as the infected individuals
run amok on a rampage spreading the disease even further. What if, unlike the
zombies on the TV show, The Walking
Dead, who are slow and clumsy, the zombies were more like the
zombies of World
War Z, who can move really fast?
The flu pandemic of 1919 killed
up to 100 million people—2-3% of the world’s population. How many would be killed by a pandemic of zombies?
Scared yet? Maybe scared enough to make me stop watching
TV. And reading the newspaper.
P.S. I did a news print poem on this subject: The Zombie Apocalypse.
P.S: I wrote a article about zombies. The most comprehensive article about zombies tat is also reader-friendly on the web. Zombies: The Popularity, Mythology, Psychology, Philosophy, and Reality.
Read the full review of episode #323, Horror and Mayhem, on my other blog: Premium Cable Reviews
Bill Maher’s Guests, #322, June 27, 2014
Joy Reid: journalist,
anchor of the MSNBC show The Reid Report,
managing editor of TheGrio.com, political columnist for the Miami Herald, and the editor of The
Reid Report political blog
Andy Dean: host of America Now with Andy Dean, a radio talk show
Bobby Ghosh: journalist, managing editor for Atlantic Media’s Quartz, former TIME Magazine's World Editor, author of The
New Middle East (with Time Magazine
editors)
Dr. Martin Blaser: Director
of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, Professor of Microbiology at New York
University School of Medicine, author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of
Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues
Max Brooks: author of World
War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, The
Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead,
and a graphic novel, The
Harlem Hellfighters (with illustrator Caanan White)
No comments:
Post a Comment