More than 60 percent of human infectious diseases are zoonotic—that is, they’re the result of humans coming into contact with a virus-carrying animal. The virus takes advantage of the new host and colonizes it. Such is the case with the virus that causes Covid-19 as well as the one that causes AIDS. While the viruses that cause Covid-19 and AIDS are quite successful in their ability to infect people, the most successful of the zoonotic viruses is the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a very transmissible species of herpesvirus that may reside within at least 90 percent of us, including half of five-year-old children.
EBV is passed from person to person through bodily fluids,
mostly saliva. With most of us, when we become infected we don’t get
particularly sick and we develop immunity. The virus remains inactive within
your body for the rest of your life. If
your infection doesn’t occur until you’re an adolescent, you have about a
fifty-percent chance of getting mononucleosis.
But it’s not all that benign. EPV has been implicated in a
bunch of diseases, especially autoimmune diseases such as lupus, multiple
sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. But it’s also been implicated in other
diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and a whole bunch of
cancers. It’s actually a rather long list. One medical journal states
“Developing a vaccine for the Epstein-Barr Virus could prevent up to 200,000
cancers globally.”
This is all rather
horrifying. Sorry I brought it up. You have enough to worry about.
For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.
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