Epilogue • 289plant seems to attack malaria at many stages in its life cycle, completely de-
stroying the parasites.^55
Among ancient bacterial diseases, tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculae)
continues to be a monumental threat to human health. The seventeenth cen-
tury knew it as consumption; later it became known as “the white plague.”
One-third of the world’s population today is infected with tubercle bacilli;
eight million individuals a year develop tuberculosis from the infection. Only
humans are susceptible to the bacillus. Sunlight and fresh air retard the in-
fection rate; stress and crowded, unsanitary conditions accelerate it. The ba-
cilli can pass through the air on droplets of moisture and can also be trans-
mitted by contaminated milk or water. The breakdown of immune resistance
in AIDS patients has greatly increased the incidence of tuberculosis. In New
York City, the disease increased threefold between 1979 and 1989 , when
AIDS was just emerging as a known threat to human life. Forty percent of
the cases were HIV-related, 82 percent of the patients were unemployed, and
68 percent were unsuitably housed or homeless. Streptomycin became a ma-
gic bullet for sufferers, but compliance in taking the drug is a serious prob-
lem, and some new strains are resistant to this antibiotic.^56
Viruses pose a greater problem than bacterial pathogens, even their most
deadly representative,Yersinia pestis.Antibiotics have no effect on viruses,
and the raging fever employed by the human body’s defense system to de-
stroy microbial invaders utterly fails. Today’s most dangerous viral pathogen
is HIV—the acronym for human immunodeficiency virus, which causes ac-
quired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV carries a strand of RNA
of around 250 bits, ten million times less than human cellular DNA—a for-
midable David to the human’s Goliath-like gene structure. Its virulence is
somewhat mitigated by its parasitic nature; it cannot replicate or organize it-
self without co-opting a living cell. But for humans who become infected, no
adequate therapies yet exist, though drug cocktails, as they are known, can
slow down the progression of the disease.^57 In addition to AIDS, viruses are
responsible for smallpox, influenza, polio, chickenpox, and measles, as well as
newly emerging and well-publicized hemorrhagic diseases such as Lassa
fever, Ebola fever, and Hantavirus.
Other threats loom on the world’s horizon. An outbreak of disease in one
spot can affect persons thousands of miles away, as was demonstrated so dra-
matically in 2002 – 3 by the appearance in China of SARS (severe acute
respiratory disease). This mysterious new type of pneumonia was first doc-
umented in Guangdong Province (adjacent to Hong Kong), where a busi-