What we can learn from our warfare with bacteria.

By Dr. Lon Jones, D.O.

Warfare has always been a part of our lives in America. We were born of a Revolutionary War, preserved by a Civil War, and made safe by a series of wars against our enemies, beginning with the Indians and now with terrorists. Warfare, and the right to bear arms, is one of the first principles of our nation.

Because of our history we see warfare as the appropriate response to significant injury. Certainly when the Japanese bombed our troops and ships in Pearl Harbor a response was indicated. More muddied were the responses to the explosion aboard the Maine that led to the Spanish American War, the Tonkin Bay episode that was used to justify our escalation of the war in Viet Nam, or the WMD used to get us into Iraq.

Not only do we have warfare with other countries but we have had a war on poverty, on cancer, on illegal drugs, and now on terrorism. Judging from our earliest declarations in the war on poverty this kind of warfare may not be a good idea:

Jared Bernstein is the co-director of research at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the co-author of The State of Working America 2002/2003, the premier source of information on economic trends affecting working people, as well as numerous other books and reports. Between 1995 and 1996, he served as deputy chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, where he worked on the initiative to raise the minimum wage.

"If you go back to 1979, prior to the period when the growth in inequality really took off in the United States, the top 5 percent on average had 11 times the average income of the bottom 20 percent. If you fast forward to the year 2000, the most recent economic peak, you find that that ratio increased to 19 times. So over the course of those two decades, the gap between the wealthiest and the lowest income families grew from 11 times to 19 times." [Emphasis added. Accessed on 24 March, 2004 from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Class_War/The_Hierarchy.html]

The wars on drugs and cancer appear to be little more successful.

By far the oldest and longest war we have been involved in is that taking place in our own bodies.  Bacteria and viruses constantly invade us, they are responsible for many deaths, and could cause many more were it not for the immune system in each of us that deals with most of these agents before they can bother us. When we do get signs of an infection we generally rely on antibiotics to kill these invading agents.

There are several parallels between this internal battle and the one we carry on with the 'other':

What doesn't work—preventive warfare.

           Sometimes we use antibiotics in order to prevent infections in people. We do this when a person has a high chance of being exposed to bacteria that could make them sick. Much of our antibiotics are used in the cattle industry because of the unhealthy conditions in feed-lots. We are finding, however, that the benefit of reduced infections in humans and animals is not worth the cost of the bacterial resistance that comes from the increased exposure to the antibiotic. While our arms race with bacteria is very profitable we are not winning it. Almost as soon as we develop a new antibiotic there are bacteria that are resistant to it. In the midst of this arms race the CDC reported 23 new infectious diseases such as the Ebola virus, a suicide bomber that destroys the host so fast it can't spread, and the bacteria that remains hidden in our stomachs until we develop ulcers. The most effective way to stop antibiotic resistance is to reduce our reliance on and our use of antibiotics. We are not doing too well here; in 1954 we made about one-third of a pound of antibiotics for every 1000 people in the United States and in 1996 we made 142 pounds. Better feed and a cleaner, more natural environment are safer and more effective ways of reducing infections, both in animals and humans.

            As a nation we are poised to begin a preventive war. We need to remember in our debates the words of Lord Acton when he said: "Our institutions are destroyed, in the end, by an excess of their first principles." The question is, "Are we as a nation excessive in our use of our violent first principle?" The average European seems to respond overwhelmingly in the affirmative. The average American appears not to think so.

 

What works better.

Most tried and tested—

            The most successful means of dealing with infections is immunization. Vaccination has even allowed us to eliminate smallpox from the entire world. When a person is immunized or vaccinated we present a part of the infecting agent to our immune system—we educate our immune system. Our immune system then knows the enemy and builds a defense against them.

           We do the same thing when we educate someone. Education was critical to the successes of the democratic revolutions that flourished for a few years beginning in 1989 after the downfall of our one-time enemy, the Soviet Union. The BBC, CNN and non-governmental organizations functioning in these countries provided independent exposure to democratic principles and examples that helped the people to identify the principles they wanted and rebel against their opposites.

 

Sensible and cost effective, but not glamorous—

             Paul Ewald in his book, Evolution of Infectious Disease, states that we can "domesticate [bacteria] so that they can live with us in a less damaging way than they have throughout our history." We can do this by making it harder for problem causing bacteria to get from one person to another. Ewald argues that we did this with cholera by public health measures that cleaned our water supplies, and that we can do it for HIV with condoms and needle exchanges. These actions actually change the bacteria or viruses to types that are less infectious.

              This kind of isolation has never been tried with outlaw nations. Our best efforts have been in economic blockades and sanctions. The economic blockade of Cuba has failed and the sanctions on Iraq have destroyed its infrastructure, but the regimes are the same. If education and a middle class are necessary for the spread of democratic values they have probably done more harm than good.

               More in line with Ewald's public health measures would be addressing the problems that breed the outlaws in the first place.

 

Simple and reasonable, but uncontrollable and inexpensive—so not even tried.

              Nathan Sharon and his colleagues have been arguing for at least twenty years that sugars can be effectively used to prevent infectious disease. Sharon points out that bacteria and viruses attach to specific sugar molecules on the cell surfaces in our bodies. If they can't attach to these sugars they are washed out and don't cause infection. Feeding specific sugars to the bacteria fills up their hungry hands leaving them with no means of attaching; it decreases their adherence to the cells in our bodies. Regular use of such sugars also isolates the infectious agents in Ewald's sense, and selects for bacteria that cause fewer problems. The sugars in cranberries decrease bacterial adherence in the gut and the bladder and select for bacteria that don't cause urinary tract infections. Similarly xylitol decreases the adherence of problem causing bacteria in the nose. Bacteria that live in the nose without causing problems, cause sinus, ear, and bronchial infections when they move out of the nose. Feeding xylitol to nasal bacteria regularly allows our normal washing of the nose to remove most of the bacteria. The problem with these sugars is that they have to be used every day, even when there is no sign of infection. Women drank cranberry extract every day for 6 months, but they had protection from urinary infections for a year. Children who chewed gum sweetened with xylitol four times a day for two years had 90% less tooth decay five years after they stopped chewing the gum. 

           Our ancestor who first fed the wolf cooked meat had to feed them every day, for a long, long time, before the wolf became dog, and our best friend. Maybe we can do the same with bacteria.

I live in the Bible Belt in the middle of the Texas panhandle. In our community we take pride in our Christian heritage and that our nation is based on Christian principles. In searching for what it means to be a Christian I keep coming up with the "Sermon on the Mount" where Jesus says, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." This difficult task is, to me, the litmus test of a real Christian. I have been waiting since the tragic events of 9/11 to hear one of our government leaders, who are so willing to wave the Christian flag when it will get them votes, suggest that we pray for the perpetrators of these events. I'm still waiting. Doing good to our enemies by feeding them worked in the Philippines, where guerrilla fighters were given jobs as they gave up their arms and the decrease in acts of violence in this country over the last decade was associated with peak employment. Helping others to satisfy their basic needs does much to reduce violence.