[extropy-chat] My fever theory for longevity

[Emlyn]

That's an interesting idea, Mike. These diseases are relatively recent
evolutionarily (since we started farming animals) but maybe that's
been long enough for us to develop a bit of symbiosis with them? ie:
maybe you can get away with more chance of developing cancer (gaining
some other health benefits in return) when immersed in an environment
full of these bugs? Then we would select in that direction; disease
and health has been our major selection pressure for a long time
(rather than food shortage or murder/being killed). In that case, to
start fighting them off successfully would have unintended
consequences.

This reminds me of the recent theory that we have a symbiotic
relationship with gut worms, that they help our immune system in some
way, and that killing them off has led to the massive increase in
allergies and asthma.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *


On 01/08/05, Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've been recently working on an article for Neal Stephenson's Metaweb
> (http://www.metaweb.com) regarding a character who is infected with
> stage 3 neurosyphilis, but contracts a sickness that causes a high
> fever that apparently kills the syphilis spirochete. Neal based this on
> a 19th century maritime anecdote he read, but it turns out that 'fever
> therapy' through inducing a mild curable form of malaria to cure
> syphilis has been in practice since the late 18th and early 19th
> centuries up until 1940 when penicillin was introduced.
> 
> It turns out that induced fevers using hot baths are now used,
> pioneered by a doctor named Issels, in conjunction with chemotherapy,
> to reduce the required dosage of drugs to a third to a half of normal
> dosages.
> 
> This led me to propose a theory, bringing in Robin Hanson's work
> demonstrating little benefit from health care, that vaccines for
> non-fatal or non-curable diseases, diseases which trigger high fevers,
> could cause people to be at higher risk of cancer.
> 
> If fever therapy weakens well developed tumors enough to improve
> chemotherapy performance, it follows that nascent cancerous cells or
> early tumors could be destroyed entirely by high fevers alone, and
> fever-inducing illness like flus, mono, etc. may explain many cases of
> mysterious remissions that doctors cannot explain otherwise.
> 
> If fever plays such a role naturally in reducing one's risk of cancer,
> this may be detectable in medical statistics. If it holds up, it may
> also explain why modern health care does not contribute measurably to
> longevity: the diseases you are protected from by vaccines may not kill
> you, but the cancers those disease fevers may otherwise destroy will,
> so they balance each other out.
> 
> There is another datapoint to this: compare national longevity to
> national prevalence of practices of taking long hot baths, spas, hot
> springs, and such which would raise body temps above 102 deg F.
> 
> Mike Lorrey
> Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
> "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
> It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
>                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806)
> Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com
> 
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