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So there's a chance that the cold is a feature and not a 'bug'? That those that weren't vulnerable to it died off from other diseases like cancer so evolution w
by cameronbrown 7y ago
So there's a chance that the cold is a feature and not a 'bug'? That those that weren't vulnerable to it died off from other diseases like cancer so evolution went the other way?
- pas 7y agoNot likely. Cancer only gets serious after most of reproduction and child rearing and nurturing has been done. Whereas cold is pretty serious for infants for example.
- dllthomas 7y agoDo note that you're doing that analysis in a setting where kids get a whole lot of colds.
- pas 7y agoDo note that evolution started to optimize when the conditions were a lot harsher. (Warm clean rooms with food and clean water, clean clothes, NSAIDs, etc.)
- dllthomas 7y agoMy point wasn't that a cold can't be dangerous. My point was that if getting a cold made a significant difference in the likelihood of some cancer then you may be substantially undercounting the risk of that cancer to children in the counterfactual where there is no susceptibility to colds. (To be clear, I don't think the parent's speculation is likely accurate. I do think it's interesting.)
- gbrown 7y agoWell said.
- pas 7y agoThat's a very important point, and you are of course right. (Your original comment wasn't very clear and I misinterpreted it, sorry.) Do kids (and people in general) get substantially less colds in warmer climates? Because then we can check cancer rates there. (And spend a lot of effort on controlling for other differences.) I wonder if anyone did this kind of data fishing.
- dllthomas 7y ago> Your original comment wasn't very clear and I misinterpreted it, sorry. Yeah, there's some tension between risk of being seen as condescending and making sure everything is sufficiently clear. In a low-stakes context like this (and outside of clarifications or responses to ELI5 requests) I try not to fill in all the gaps - when it goes well it leaves us all feeling a little smarter and when it goes wrong it occasionally leads somewhere interesting. The increased risk of misinterpretation was made even worse here by the priming of several other people making the point I wasn't.
- xky 7y agoYour parent was not being snarky. The parroting is snarky and doesn’t assist your point.
- pas 7y agoI haven't interpreted that comment as snakry, and I had no intention to be snarky, though I see why it came off like that.
- arkades 7y agoColds are not the flu. Children tolerate colds just fine.
- balabaster 7y agoIn my experience of being around a lot of kids, my own included, kids tend to tolerate colds a whole lot better than adults do.
- lloydde 7y agoColds are dangerous to new borns just as the parent comment says.
- Flott 7y agoPretty much anything is dangerous for a new born. I have to admit that I'd be much more scared from the flu on a new born than a cold.
- lloydde 7y agoSure, my comment is generally obvious, except I felt it needed to be said as arkades's comment seemed dismissive of the risks to infants with his response of "Colds are not the flu. Children tolerate colds just fine." Flu are truly scary causing deaths throughout childhood with increased survival around two years and then again around five years. My youngest turns five this month. Before she was two she was hospitalized with croup and she has had a rougher ride with illness than my other kids along the way too.
- arkades 7y agoNewborns are in danger from just about anything. Other special populations of children include those with AIDS, CF, DM, and any other immunocompromising condition or respiratory anomaly. Having addressed the special populations that are implicitly not the targets of broad comments: Typical children tolerate colds just fine. It’s not the flu. (Croup is also not a cold.)
- empath75 7y agomy kids get a cold every month, it seems like.. I don't think it's that serious.
- lloydde 7y agoColds are dangerous to new borns just as the parent comment says.
- pas 7y agoSure, because we have fire, shelter, insulation, clothes, a virtually endless supply of food, medicine, safe/clean potable water, etc. Evolution started without any of those.
- dllthomas 7y agoEvolution started without DNA, so that's not quite the right focus.
- dredmorbius 7y ago200k - 2m years of human / protohuman development, vs ~100 years under vaguely modern conditions, is a big difference. Your reply fails to acknowledge it.
- dllthomas 7y agoMy reply was narrowly addressing a mistake repeated across a couple comments. It was not intended to undermine the argument as a whole. Your comment seems, by implication, to make a similar mistake: it doesn't matter much how long we were in a different situation - what matters is whether we've had enough of a chance to adapt to the new one. It doesn't take (k)X years to "undo" adaptations that took X years to find. And yes, the 100 years you give are clearly not enough generations to do much adapting. Some of the items mentioned in the earlier comment (clothes, fire, shelter) are things humans have had for substantially longer than 100 years. But I don't know enough about the relevant time scales for anything to be clear to me about how much we've probably adapted to having them, which is why I didn't speak to that.
- everdev 7y agoSure, but communities with healthy parents and elders probably successfully raise more children.
- rjurney 7y agoWell, hold on there: natural selection is not always so simple. Older adults take care of their own as well as the extended family's offspring, providing a mechanism for selection.
- londons_explore 7y agoIt's also negative natural selection if Aunt Anna is very old, can barely walk, is losing her mind, yet still eats all the food the children grow ...
- rjurney 7y agoFor a short time but caring for the sick has benefits overall and granny had years of productivity after fertility.
- agumonkey 7y agoy f = f y f
- drchiu 7y agoNo, I don't think so as "cold medicine" doesn't actually kill cold viruses (eg. rhinovirus).
- turtlecloud 7y agoI think you might be thinking of vaccines
- buu700 7y agoOh god. That's a good question / thought experiment (edit: okay, maybe not exactly as stated), but how long will it be before the headline "Vaccines cause cancer" starts making the rounds on Facebook?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- whatshisface 7y agoWe're safe, because there is no cold vaccine.
- magduf 7y agoNo, but we have many other vaccines and some crackpot could make up some fake data claiming that vaccines cause cancer and that we never had all this cancer back in the "good old days" before vaccines were invented.
- balabaster 7y agoYou mean when everyone was dead long before the cancer could've had a chance to kill them?
- senortumnus 7y agoKnow that in this study the virus was targeted to infect cells expressing ICAM-1, which is expressed on bladder cancer cells.
- rjurney 7y agoNot a minor detail :)
- rolltiide 7y agoOr it was engineered by a prior civilization in the Paleolithic age and left the virus to roam the earth for this specific purpose (Perhaps all their recorded history was digital or otherwise ephemeral so we cant find it, assuming history repeats itself)
- Krasnol 7y agoErich is it you?
- pilsetnieks 7y agoErich von Däniken is the ancient aliens guy; you're thinking Graham Hancock, he's the ancient advanced civilizations guy.
- magduf 7y agoTo be fair, the idea of ancient advanced civilizations is slightly more believable than ancient aliens, simply due to the difficulties associated with traversing star systems. Even worse, both of these ideas, while obvious "crackpot" territory, are much more believable and less fantastical than the claims of most of our current religions, which most people in the world still believe. So as long as we continue to respect peoples' religious beliefs, I have a hard time with dismissing these ancient aliens/advanced civilizations claims out-of-hand.
- thrwitaway 7y agoGetting a cold is a great thing. Getting a fever is awesome too. The idea that people need to "treat" these events is ridiculous and only weakens one's body even more in the long run. Our bodies are very capable at healing themselves when not taxed with constant barrage of food intake, in particular acid-forming foods, protein, etc. Expand your knowledge beyond what mainstream medicine tells you. Take an afternoon to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzUdIggcRNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzUdIggcRNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v0v36lcrS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v0v36lcrS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yfGTmgS4QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yfGTmgS4QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtgZfAxSpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtgZfAxSpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXcGB5wlWnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXcGB5wlWnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R07FL1wVo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R07FL1wVo4
- googlemike 7y agoPlease provide scientific proof in the form of peer reviewed research or delete your comment. There is no room for these kinds of wild and ridiculous statements without proof.
- jMyles 7y ago> Please provide scientific proof in the form of peer reviewed research or delete your comment. I want to caution against this kind of gatekeeping on a forum like Hacker News. We all adore the scientific method; nobody wants to dispute its worth and value to the species. However, 1) As we've seen again and again in a wide array of fields, many of the systems of peer-review have failed to guarantee (or in some cases even provide reasonable assurance) that the results are robust and true. There is an ongoing replicability crisis in a number of fields, including health-related fields. 2) There is still value in logical assertions made without scientific proof; there is nothing wrong with taking personal observation and applying inductive reasoning as part of the toolchain of decision making. > There is no room for these kinds of wild and ridiculous statements without proof. I don't find anything wild or ridiculous inherent in the suggestion that the human body is capable of basic self-maintenance, nor that exposure to pathogens or other undesirables is a causal factor in the building of immunity and other defenses.
- dalore 7y agoCancer is a fairly modern disease. You can even see from the accounts of encounters with native tribes, cancer is virtually unknown until they start consuming western food.
- vajrabum 7y agoCancer is virtually unknown until people start living long enough to develop cancers. Oh and don't forget the juvenile cancers.
- mr_toad 7y agoCancer increases with age, but also with smoking, drinking, pollution, bad diet, obesity, lack of exercise, and exposure to viruses. I wouldn’t be surprised if people living in a tribal society had lower cancer rates even if you corrected for age. On the other hand, if they did get cancer, survival rates would be much lower.
- dalore 7y agoYou forget that life expectancy for native populations aren't due to them to not living long lives, but more due to the fact they have more deaths at childhood (due to stuff like bacteria infections and other diseases we now prevent). So you have a big chunk of population dying young. Also these cultures can be more violent and often have wars killing a big chunk. But past that bump it's not as short as the average (it's far larger). For example the Native Americans if one of them lived to 40, he could expect to live to round 70. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_was_the_average_life_expectancy_of_a_native/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_... 70 is easily a cancer age. Going by the current research at https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/02/04/why-are-cancer-rates-increasing/ https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/02/04/why-are-... one can expect 3/4 people over 60 to have cancer. And it's increasing. So yeah the not living long enough doesn't really hold water. Also juvenile cancers weren't really a thing at all until the modern world (more likely bacterial infections until we discovered penicillin were more likely for juvenile deaths).
- carterehsmith 7y ago