Quizzes & Puzzles1 min ago
How Was It That One Disease, The Plague Carried By Gerbil Fleas, Could Be Transmitted By Flea Bites While...
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...another, HIV/AIDS, isn't?
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Interesting Sandy. These viruses etc. do t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶m̶o̶g̶ change over time. Leap species, etc. Aids was a monkey thing, wasn't it. Won't be very fair on good Catholic boys like us but at least I haven't got a dog(or a cat)
Incidentally, I heard on tv the other night that everyone who owns a cat has Toxaplasma or something. Disgusting, but possibly a different thread. (although sort of connected)
Incidentally, I heard on tv the other night that everyone who owns a cat has Toxaplasma or something. Disgusting, but possibly a different thread. (although sort of connected)
Yes, they're all full of disgusting parasites that attack the brain and make you sluggish and attracted to cats. Very handy when mice & rats get it. Handy for hungry cats, that is.
http://
http://
Since fleas feed on blood, their stomach enzymes are good at digesting all the components in blood. If present, AIDS will be attached to or lurking inside a special category of lymphocytes (among the "white blood cells"). Being no more than a short piece of DNA, wrapped in a protein coat, it will simply get digested.
Obvious question is why does the plague bacterium not get digested by the flea? Well, they do but their cell wall is tough enough that they should *just about* be able to reproduce faster than they can be digested, meaning there are sufficient of them to be transmitted, next time it bites.
The virus can only reproduce by hijacking the inner workings of a lymphocyte cell. As I said, once that gets digested, the virus is inert and will be also be digested.
Obvious question is why does the plague bacterium not get digested by the flea? Well, they do but their cell wall is tough enough that they should *just about* be able to reproduce faster than they can be digested, meaning there are sufficient of them to be transmitted, next time it bites.
The virus can only reproduce by hijacking the inner workings of a lymphocyte cell. As I said, once that gets digested, the virus is inert and will be also be digested.
-I dunno
people are having some quite good stabs at a useful theory.
HIV / AIDS is not and cannot be transmitted by fleas/mosquitoes
It is in fact a sexually transmitted disease ( OK forget syringes )
The current view about Plague is that it was spread by the bite of the black rat ( rattus rattus ) flea ( xenopsylla cheopsis ) and when the rats of europe changed to the norwegian rat ( yup r. norvegicus ) it was bye bye plague.
and the big thing was that the black rat flea MUST have a feed of black rat blood in order to complete its life cycle
so yup I was very surprised ( and doubtful ) that it had been spread by gerbils all along - I admit they could share the same flea. Human blood isnt good enough by the way.
Darwinian evolution by the way copes with such closely linked species. each quadriped has its own flea. Creationists on the other hand say .....
As a result of passage thro humans the plague bacterium becomes more virulent for man and so at the end of an epidemic there is person to person spread without the flea. There is no description in 1349 of rats coming out of the sewers and dying and so someone has said it was all pneumonic plague - again I am not sure.
and finally why not ? "rat-fall". With open rafters in houses, the rats run along the open planks and with plague the rats fall off the rafters onto the surprised people beneath - and expire in front of them. This is called rat-fall (!) And the old nineteenth century doctors used to say - no ratfall, no plague
there you are thought I would add that
people are having some quite good stabs at a useful theory.
HIV / AIDS is not and cannot be transmitted by fleas/mosquitoes
It is in fact a sexually transmitted disease ( OK forget syringes )
The current view about Plague is that it was spread by the bite of the black rat ( rattus rattus ) flea ( xenopsylla cheopsis ) and when the rats of europe changed to the norwegian rat ( yup r. norvegicus ) it was bye bye plague.
and the big thing was that the black rat flea MUST have a feed of black rat blood in order to complete its life cycle
so yup I was very surprised ( and doubtful ) that it had been spread by gerbils all along - I admit they could share the same flea. Human blood isnt good enough by the way.
Darwinian evolution by the way copes with such closely linked species. each quadriped has its own flea. Creationists on the other hand say .....
As a result of passage thro humans the plague bacterium becomes more virulent for man and so at the end of an epidemic there is person to person spread without the flea. There is no description in 1349 of rats coming out of the sewers and dying and so someone has said it was all pneumonic plague - again I am not sure.
and finally why not ? "rat-fall". With open rafters in houses, the rats run along the open planks and with plague the rats fall off the rafters onto the surprised people beneath - and expire in front of them. This is called rat-fall (!) And the old nineteenth century doctors used to say - no ratfall, no plague
there you are thought I would add that
O god I forgot !
the link between HIV and plague
JUst out of nowhere,
there came a report that the little village of Eyam ( pronounced eem) which had been decimated by the Plague in 1665, their descendants when tested ( but why that what I wanted to know ) for HIV were resistant to HIV infection and the conclusion was drawn that they shared the same receptor to gain cell entry
odd
here for example
http://
the link between HIV and plague
JUst out of nowhere,
there came a report that the little village of Eyam ( pronounced eem) which had been decimated by the Plague in 1665, their descendants when tested ( but why that what I wanted to know ) for HIV were resistant to HIV infection and the conclusion was drawn that they shared the same receptor to gain cell entry
odd
here for example
http://
@Peter_Pedant
You described there a classic feature of evolution which the average Creationist would be hard pressed to repeat accurately, much less understand/accept.
The modern day villagers show a resistance but the key part is that their ancestors' generation was decimated (may I presume you meant the colloquial, "90% died" meaning and not the Roman Legionary "1 in 10" meaning?)
Evolutionary change outwardly appears to be a magically appropriate response to an emergent crisis. I hold by the idea that, starting from a position of genetic variety, the resistant group always existed but it required devastation of the bulk of the population for their survival advantage to show through.
Likewise, most rats in the developed nations are now warfarin-resistant. I think the odds are small that the mutation at the root of that resistance arose within the short time period of warfarin useage and has been present all the time.
In short, outwardly perceptible evolutionary changes happen in response to *mass-scale death*. Disease, famine, drought, predators just got faster and so on. The more varied a species is, the harder it is to wipe it out.
Monoculture is a recipe for disaster. It's why eugenics is such a no-no.
You described there a classic feature of evolution which the average Creationist would be hard pressed to repeat accurately, much less understand/accept.
The modern day villagers show a resistance but the key part is that their ancestors' generation was decimated (may I presume you meant the colloquial, "90% died" meaning and not the Roman Legionary "1 in 10" meaning?)
Evolutionary change outwardly appears to be a magically appropriate response to an emergent crisis. I hold by the idea that, starting from a position of genetic variety, the resistant group always existed but it required devastation of the bulk of the population for their survival advantage to show through.
Likewise, most rats in the developed nations are now warfarin-resistant. I think the odds are small that the mutation at the root of that resistance arose within the short time period of warfarin useage and has been present all the time.
In short, outwardly perceptible evolutionary changes happen in response to *mass-scale death*. Disease, famine, drought, predators just got faster and so on. The more varied a species is, the harder it is to wipe it out.
Monoculture is a recipe for disaster. It's why eugenics is such a no-no.
Hi Hypo
the creationists use this example of close evolution to say it couldnt have happened without a central heavenly director - similarly the privet hawk moth sitting munching on a privet....
they also say that about the evolution/appearnce of the vertebrate eye unaware of the irony that Darwin said once the problem has been solved it would prove the theory of evolution
Thing about eem is I cant understand why there were testing them for HIV in the first place.... as in .... I cant think what to do in my lab this afternoon o I know I will bleed and test everyone in eem for HIV
the creationists use this example of close evolution to say it couldnt have happened without a central heavenly director - similarly the privet hawk moth sitting munching on a privet....
they also say that about the evolution/appearnce of the vertebrate eye unaware of the irony that Darwin said once the problem has been solved it would prove the theory of evolution
Thing about eem is I cant understand why there were testing them for HIV in the first place.... as in .... I cant think what to do in my lab this afternoon o I know I will bleed and test everyone in eem for HIV
@Peter_Pedant
This article
http://
suggests that they weren't seeking to test Eyam residents for AIDS, specifically, merely that similarities between the way in which AIDS virus and plague bacterium attach to lymphocytes had been noted and Eyam residents have an unusually high representation of the special mutation (14% of them) whereas people on the various continents which never suffered the 1660s plague have zero.
This article
http://
suggests that they weren't seeking to test Eyam residents for AIDS, specifically, merely that similarities between the way in which AIDS virus and plague bacterium attach to lymphocytes had been noted and Eyam residents have an unusually high representation of the special mutation (14% of them) whereas people on the various continents which never suffered the 1660s plague have zero.
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