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The more we try to 'sterilze' our society, the less immunity our bodies have against germs.
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Asimov wrote about this years ago with the Robot books -- people who had left Earth ("Spacers" if memory serves) had so insulated themselves from one another and from Earth-borne disease and germs that their immune systems atrophied to near uselessness. They'd wear special filters inside their nostrils when in another person's presence to remove pathogens. I may have made a hash out of the details, but this germphobia has been taken to its extreme in SciFi literature.
My mom is an infectious disease control specialist in upstate New York. The ***** that goes on, and how close we've come to a "superbug" is honest-to-God "how are we still here as a species" frightening.
Not the "humans can't figure out how to merge on an on-ramp 'how are we still here as a species?'", but the "our number has just got to come up soon 'how are we still here as a species'".
IIRC, it's not necessarily over use of antibiotics and other drugs, it's "cocktailing" or sequencing them inappropriately, prematurely or after-the-fact.
For example, you have Bug F (which is usually fatal), and in order to attack Bug F you first need Drug X to weaken its defenses (viral shell, whatever). After sufficient amount of Drug X has been applied, you then need Drug Y to attack Bug F and kill it or simply render it incapable of reproducing (or whatever).
Problems: Too little Drug X (or for some reason on YOU it is less potent b/c of your chemistry) and Bug F isn't weak enough to be killed by Drug Y and becomes resistant. If Drug Y is the only thing that'll take out Bug F before Bug F takes out its host -- we're done.
Drug Z has been used for symptomatic treatment and it interferes with the effects of Drug X or Drug Y; Bug F has time to adapt and become resistant -- we're done.
What's worse -- Bug F has been misdiagnosed and it's actually Bug Q, which Drug X is specifically contraindicated for b/c it is used as the follow-up punch for Drug W, and to use it before Drug W has done its stuff means Bug Q can become resistant to Drug X.
In the foregoing, Bug F or Bug Q might mutate into some much more aggressive, lethal form of its prior self as well.
Obviously the foregoing is my layman recollection of what was seriously a grown-up and true version of the sitting-around-the-campfire horror stories. Any virologists or epidemiologists out there, please forgive the imprecise explanations.
All that aside, since this thread had moved off strictly venereal diseases, do you guys have any idea how many diseases your body currently hosts? How many complex organisms live in -- and ON -- your body while you're in perfect health?
Again, IIRC, at the onset of AIDS, it's usually not an "external" opportunistic infection that "gets" you, it's something you're carrying around in your lungs or your alimentary canal right now. If you put an HIV positive person in a Clean Room from the moment he was infected, he's already probably carrying what'll kill him. Your immune system is fending off some of the scariest ***** you can imagine right now, as it does 24/7.
These are the dividends of mom, instead of writing "your sister got a role in the school play and your brother fell off his bike (again) yesterday " letters while I was away at school, sending issues of MMWR (The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and the name pretty much says it all) with articles on necrotizing fasciitis or pneumocystis carinii circled for me. So I'd read them, curled up in bed, together with the literally millions of dustmites that live off of my flesh (and to whose feces I'm allergic -- which is ironic b/c their ***** is me!).
JP