Prompt 1: Set a timer for 3 minutes, and make a list of as many human non-infectious diseases that you can think of that are influenced by microorganisms.
-Depression, anxiety, other assorted mental health-related disorders Additional, other cognitive health issues such as Alzheimer’s,
-Obesity, Atherosclerosis, and Diabetes
-G.E.R.D./Stomach Ulcers/IBDs
-Gastric Cancer
-Immune insufficiency
-Asthma
Prompt 2: Refer back to your Writing Exercise #1 that you completed the first week of class. Reflect and discuss how your responses have changed from week 1 to week 10, and what the most important topics you will take away with you once you have completed the course.
I remember when I first read the prompt for this assignment. I remember the difficulty of thinking about non-infectious diseases in a way associated with microbes. To me, infectious disease and microbes originally had seemed to go exclusively hand-in-hand. I had a such a strong mental schema of microbes causing disease, that it was difficult to conceptualize microbial influence on non-infectious disease. However, through taking this course, not only have I gained a more expansive knowledge base regarding the Human Health-Microbe connection, but I have also learned new ways to think about their INDIRECT connections. Additionally, an important take away I got from this class is the bidirectionality causations of these relationships. Just as microbes can cause/influence non-infectious diseases, but the diseases themselves can influence the microbes in turn.
The key message to me is that human health is incredibly complex. They say, ‘The more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. Another quote I often hear is told to medical students is “50% of the material we will teach you will be wrong by the time you graduate. The problem is, we don’t know which 50%.” I believe this statement, while likely more of an approximation than an exact specific, holds a lot of merits, and it reminds us to always maintain an appreciable level of skepticism when you learn something new.
More than likely, much of the incorrect information that is taught was never meant to be intentionally deceitful. However, we live in a time of mass media, easy access to (not always credible) information and viral stories, where eye-catching headlines are often incentivized over accuracy. Even if future information comes out debunking the latest media health craze, the damage can still be perpetuated by fears of conspiracy, or even just simply not knowing better. The MMR Vaccine and Autism is the classic example of this.
Originally titled ‘Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children’ the 1998 study published by Andrew Wakefield claimed a connection between receiving the MMR Vaccine and the development of autism in children. While any non-medically educated person would see the article title and not give it a second glance, the media saw a potentially big-selling story and grabbed it and ran. Newspapers quickly became flooded with headlines like “MMR: THE TRUTH” in bold red letters, claiming that the vaccine causes autism. The hysteria created from the study done in 1998 stuck in the minds of consumers, and there are still large anti-vaccine movements today, 20 years later. It didn’t matter that literally HUNDREDS of other studies showing the study to be false, the article being fully retracted from the journal it was published in, Andrew Wakefield himself confessing to foul play and ultimately losing his medical license, a quick google search to this day will still likely be saturated with claims that the vaccine causes autism.
For me, the most important concepts I will take away from this class are to not only maintain an appropriate and professional level of skepticism about new information but to make sure to keep my mind open to think about relationships and connections that may not always be obvious. By thinking outside the box, we may stumble upon life-changing ideas never considered before or lead to new theories/studies to expand on what is found. The human body is indeed highly complex and specialized, but we mustn’t forget that it is still just one body, working, not always in an obvious way, to sustain life in a single being.
