Plague Time: How Stealth Infections Cause Cancer, Heart Disease, and Other Deadly Ailments

by Paul W. Ewald

Book Overview

According to conventional wisdom, our genes and lifestyles are the most important causes of cancer, heart disease, and other killer ailments today. Conventional wisdom is wrong. In this bold,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684869004
• ISBN13: 9780684869001
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A very important book

Ewald sets out to show that medicine has made so little progress over the past 50 years in tackling chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer because it has been looking in the wrong places - at genetic defects and environmental factors. The medical authorities have virtually ignored infectious causes of chronic diseases. The case for infectious causation of ulcers met with hostility and dismissal from the medical profession. The doctors who proved that heliobacter pylori caused ulcers had to struggle for years before their work was recognised. Ewald provides good evidence that many other chronic diseases are likely to have infectious causes.The reviews here seem to divide into two camps: those who believe that Ewald has got hold of a vitally important idea that will transform the way we tackle chronic disease, and those who dismiss the book. I am firmly in the first camp. I found it clear, balanced, and full of fascinating insights.

The most important theory in medicine

Not genes but germs cause most chronic diseases. So argues evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald in his new book, "Plague Time: How Stealth Infections Cause Cancers, Heart Disease, and Other Deadly Ailments," (Free Press, 282 pp, ...). The Amherst professor is trying to drag the medical establishment into the Darwinian age. While modern research often aims to uncover genetic factors in major diseases, Ewald contends that "human genome mania" often violates the fundamental principle of biology, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Darwin argued that families with harmful hereditary traits will die out over time, asserts Ewald, and would be replaced by lineages whose hereditary constitution better enables them to survive and reproduce. Ultimate goals aside, Ewald has made sure that lay readers will find his book interesting and intelligible. He believes that patients are often more open-minded than their doctors. In an interview, Ewald claimed that the health benefits of the Human Genome Project are over hyped because "most diseases aren't genetic." He said research funds dedicated to improve antibiotics would bring greater payoffs than those spent on the glamour field of genetic research. Ewald, who is not a medical doctor, said, "My goal is to bring into medicine all of biology, especially evolution." So far, he has had more success persuading other biologists than the medical establishment. The late William D. Hamilton of Oxford University, England -- considered by the likes of Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins to be the most important evolutionary thinker of recent decades -- commented on Ewald's theory, "It opens our eyes to many quite weird possibilities about disease that most medical scientists, tending to be unaware of current evolutionary thought, don't think of." Ewald contends there are only three fundamental causes of disease: -- First, nonliving environmental agents like radiation, poisons, and nutrition. Too many cigarettes cause lung cancer; too little Vitamin D causes rickets. -- Second, infections. Long ago, people figured out that smallpox, measles, and chicken pox passed from one person to another. Since then, an ever-growing number of diseases have been shown to be induced by bacteria, viruses, or protozoa. Historically, infectious agents have been harder to identify than nonliving poisons as the cause of diseases because germs can evolve ways to hide. Simple chemicals cannot. -- Third, hereditary causes. The Human Genome Project has been widely advertised as eventually leading to cures for many diseases, such as breast cancer. Ewald observed, however, "If one identical twin gets breast cancer, the other's likelihood of contracting it is only around 10 to 20 percent. This suggests that genes are not the whole story." But the more basic logical problem with what he dubs Human Genome Mania, argued Ewald, is natural selection theory. Such reasoning was forcefully introduced to Ewald in the early 1990s by a letter from a ph

"We are their food."

Ewald's startling thesis is that "infection is at the root of the major chronic diseases of our time" (p. 271). These diseases include the two big killers, cancer and heart disease, and possibly Alzheimer's. His thesis is a heresy to a significant part of the medical establishment, and if correct, a revolution in the making. The conventional wisdom believes that cancer and heart disease are caused by a combination of factors including hereditary predisposition (bad genes), environmental catalysts (pollution), bad life style choices (fatty diet, alcohol, cigarettes), stress, etc. But what Ewald is saying is that there is a bacterium or a virus that causes these chronic diseases.One of the powerful ideas behind Ewald's belief is the growing realization from evolutionary medicine that a major human disease cannot possibly be caused by bad genes since natural selection would have weeded them out long ago (pp. 55-56). Diseases caused by bad genes can only occur in a small percentage of a given population. The only exception would be a "bad gene" that has a compensating adaptive characteristic, such as the gene for sickle cells which confers immunity to malaria. Consequently, "the best bet is that they [chronic diseases] have infectious causes" (p. 56).The practical evidence, evidence that has been consistently explained away or ignored, is the actual presence of disease agents in the tissues. Thus cervical cancer is now known to be caused by a papillomavirus that hides in the tumors and as such is a sexually transmitted disease. Peptic ulcers are now known to be caused by a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, and not worry or stress or booze, although these may be contributing factors. Chlamydia pneumoniae bacteria are increasingly being implicated in heart disease. In Chapter Eight, Ewald makes the case for C. pneumoniae being the cause not only of atherosclerosis but Alzheimer's disease as well! Again, if correct, this is a revolution. The interesting (and terrible) thing about the peptic ulcer story is that it was known as long ago as the forties that peptic ulcers could be successfully treated with antibiotics, but that knowledge somehow became lost (!) until the early nineties (p. 99).There is more: Ewald reports that Japanese researchers found the Borna disease virus "in one third of their patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome" and that this same virus "has been implicated in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder" (p. 162). I would not be surprised to learn that other chronic diseases of unclear etiology such as fibromyalgia, certain kinds of arthritis, and even unexplained chronic pain are caused or at least initiated by infectious agents, probably viruses. (Actually I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a new kind of infectious agent, something smaller and stealthier than a virus is the cause of some human diseases. But then I used to write science fiction.)One of Ewald's main arguments is that we can lessen the virulence

Intriguing Ideas Make For Worthwhile Reading

About halfway through Plague Time, the author notes the reaction of the evolutionary biologist William D. Hamilton to the theory that AIDS was caused by a contaminated vaccine. He states that Hamilton did not say that a contaminated vaccine definitely introduced AIDS into humans, but instead stated that the idea needed to be evaluated rigorously because it was being dismissed without adequate evidence for dismissal. I think that same statement could apply to the ideas presented in Plague Time.Ewald does a marvelous job of taking the readers through the intricacies of evolutionary biology. He effectively demonstrates how evolutionary biology theories can help explain many of the mysteries surrounding diseases that are currently attributed to a multitude of causes. It should be noted that he never definitively proves that viruses and bacteria are the causes of these diseases. But, he does present enough evidence to justify further exploration of the idea.The book is not perfect. Some of the language gets a little technical at times. Also, Ewald has a tendency to repeat the same examples, thus giving the impression that there is some "filler" in the book. But, these points don't detract from the fact that this is a very persuasive work. The theories inside it may prove to be invalid, but they are certainly worth further exploration by both the scientific community and the reader attempting to educate themselves on their health.

Proposes A Paradigm Shift for Overcoming Chronic Diseases

This book clearly deserves more than five stars. This is one of the three best books published so far in 2000 that I have read.Plague Time is an important book for the future health of all. It is the most articulate argument I have seen for improving the basic mechanisms of studying and preventing disease in the most effective ways. And it shows important lessons about what is needed to overcome stalled progress in any field. Professor Ewald is a profound stallbuster! We will only get full benefit from his work though, if this thinking is quickly absorbed by the medical community, as a sort of idea virus.The perspective of this book will be new to many readers. Evolutionary biology is something that few have learned in school. Basically, the field looks at a germ's eye view of the world. For example, if a germ kills the host it feeds on too quickly, that's bad for the germ. The germ hasn't yet had time to spread to a new host. On the other hand, if it takes too long to spread to other hosts, that's bad for a germ also. So germs will do best that are able to spread quickly from host to host, and keep the host alive to provide more food. That spells a prescription for the prevalence of many chronic diseases that are associated with long-lived infections from bacteria and viruses.The germ theory of disease is only about 120 years old. So it is fairly recent that we have been using hygiene (washing between patients and clean water to drink), vaccines (to help the body's immune system prepare for a larger invasion), and antibiotics (to kill bacteria) to control disease-producing agents. From this work, we have learned that acute diseases are almost always linked to a bacterial or virus invasion of our bodies. These invasions can come from other people (sneezes, blood, or germs on a surface) or vectors (agents like mosquitos). What many will not realize is that many chronic diseases are turning out to be caused by such invasions as well. For example, most peptic ulcers (once thought to be caused by stress and too much stomach acid) are now easily treated by antibiotics. Cervical cancer is also related to an infection. It is estimated that 15 percent of all cancers are now shown to be caused by such infections. Cancer researchers also can account for only about 50 percent of cancer risk from environmental factors. That remaining 35 percent gap could well turn out to be related to unsuspected infection links, working in combination with environmental factors.Professor Ewald proposes a number of interesting hypotheses that would appear to deserve serious attention. First, the evolutionary biology view would suggest that sexually transmitted infections as a primary source of chronic disease in wealthier countires. These infections live in the host for a long time without immediately killing the host, and are highly contagious. The sites of many diseases also show the presence of these same infections (examples include c. pneumoniae -