EPIDEMIOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Conference Fail? Nobody’s perfect.

Meanwhile, this is interesting. “If you start digging around in the evolutionary medicine literature, you’ll see that one oft-repeated tenet is that many more ‘chronic’ and ‘lifestyle’ diseases are actually caused by microbes than we currently realize. (I’ll note that there is active disagreement here in the field–one reason noted is that many of these diseases would decrease one’s fitness and thus they are unlikely to be genetic, but many of them also have onset later in life than the prime reproductive years, so–still controversial). But whether you agree on the evolutionary reasoning or not, I think it’s safe to say that those who make this claim (like the Neese & Williams book I linked) are probably right on the overall assertion that more and more of these ‘lifestyle/genetics’ diseases are going to be actually microbial in cause than we currently realize.”