Not the last of them – Healthcare Blog

By Kim Billard

I see two opposing but interconnected visions of the future. One when journalist David Wallace Wells He says We may be on the verge of the “Golden Age of Medicine,” as CRISPR and mRNA revolutionize drug development. The second is HBO’s miserable hitThe last of usAndA fungal infection has turned much of the world’s population into zombie-like creatures.

The conflict is clear but the connection is not much. Mr. Wallace-Wells never mentions fungi in his article, but if we have a golden age of medicine, or if we want to avoid a global fungal outbreak, we had better pay more attention to mycology—that is, to the study of fungi.

we do not need “The last of usTo worry about fungus outbreaks. The Wall Street Journal reports:

A severe fungal disease used to be a strange thing. Now a threat to the millions of Americans at risk, treatments are beginning to lose efficacy as fungal pathogens develop resistance to standard medications.

“It’s only going to get worse,” warns Dr. Tom Chiller, chief of the fungal disease branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wall Street Journal.

a New study It was found that a common but highly drug-resistant fungus – Aspergillus smoke – It was found even in a very remote and sparsely populated part of China. Professor Jianping Xu, one of the authors, pointing to: “This fungus is everywhere – it’s around us all the time. We all breathe in hundreds of spores of this type every day.”

We shouldn’t be surprised, because fungi tend to be spread by spores in fact, according to the startling Merlin Sheldrake. Intertwined Lives: How Fungi Create Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Fungal spores are the largest source of living particles in the air. They are also in the land, in the water, and in us. They’re everywhere.

It sounds scary, but without fungi, we would not only not survive, we would never evolve.

Fungi allowed marine plants to colonize the land, bringing marine organisms ashore and ultimately us, among other species. Dr. Sheldrake notes that every plant that grows under natural conditions has a fungus that lives with it. They help break down minerals in the soil for plants, among other things.

Without them, we are nothing.

And that part about taking over animal brains, as in The last of usAnd It is, in fact, true. For example, they are known to invade the brains of ants and mice, causing them to exhibit unusual behavior that kills the animal but causes the fungus to spread, which is their target. The effect on human behavior is the answer It seems that be somewhere between “might” and “maybe”. If you’re a fan of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the answer is “yes.”

in meeting with New York times“Mycelium [networks of fungal threads] is environmental connective tissue and reminds us that all life, including humans, are bound by webs of turbulent relationships, some visible and some less so.” We can ignore them, we can try to fight them, but the failure to recognize how we fit into those webs comes at a cost. Our own responsibility.

“Fungi are not thought about enough,” said Dr. Peter Pappas, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Tell Wall Street Journal. Dr. Andre Speck, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington, agrees, adding, “In medicine, fungi are an afterthought. We need a paradigm shift.”

actually. like Wall Street Journal He went on to say:

Infectious disease experts said that many medical schools do not adequately train aspiring physicians to recognize and treat fungal diseases. These experts said that some schools devote two hours to the subject. “Most fungal diseases are taught in medical school as rare or unusual or some are regional, but we see these diseases on a daily basis,” said Dr. George R. Thompson, an infectious disease specialist at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. .

I’m glad we’re at least aware of the problems fungi can cause to our health, but I’m afraid we’re going down the same path we did with bacteria. We discovered they could harm us, then we found we could kill them, developed a suite of antibacterials that could kill them on a massive scale, and then we proceeded to overuse them. As of late, we eventually realized that bacteria become resistant to them over time and, even worse, that we need some bacteria.

We’re barely beginning to realize the importance the microbiome plays in our health, but we haven’t significantly changed our medical education or practice of medicine to recognize this role. We’re further behind when it comes to mycobiome. If we were barely taught how to recognize and treat fungal diseases in medical school, imagine how far behind we are in how to use our fungal companions to enhance our health.

Immunologist Barney Graham, a central figure in the development of mRNA vaccines, Mr. Wallace Wells said: “It’s amazing. You can’t imagine what you’ll see in the next 30 years. The pace of progress is at an exponential stage right now.” But I would argue that if all we’re doing is building a new set of vaccines and weapons against different microbes, I don’t foresee a golden age for our health.

Mr. Sheldrake and others look at using, not killing, fungi. They can be used, for example, to produce antivirals, to break down pollutants, to produce food, to build materials (Manufacture of mushrooms), and even Mr. Sheldrake describes in a new paperTo help us fight climate change through carbon sequestration. They are not our enemies. They were here before us, and they will be here long after us.

As Dr. Pappas said, we need a paradigm shift.

It’s amazing that we’ve deciphered our genetic code, and even more than we can modify now. It’s amazing how we can use imaging to watch our bodies—and even our brains—work in real time, and we can use those findings to identify problems. It is exciting that we can use DNA fragments to detect cancers and other diseases at an early stage. But we’re still in the lurch as to what a “healthy” microbiome is and how that matters to us, not to mention how our microbiome interacts with it and the “us.”

The fact of the matter is that our concept of “we” is an illusion. We are a network, of our DNA, cells and processes, and all the other organisms that coexist with us. Our health is a network effect. We are only healthy when that network is in balance.

We don’t reach the golden age of medicine and biomedical innovation without fungi.

Kim is a former marketing executive at one of Blues Master Plans, editor of The Departed and The Dew tinctureand now a regular contributor to THCB.