Pathogenesis Quotes

“There is one universally incorrect choice: do nothing. This didn't work when humans thought that plagues were a punishment sent by angry gods. Nor does a laissez-faire approach help stop disease when it is a deliberate policy choice.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Pathogens thrive on inequality and injustice.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Our species is said to have triumphed over all others because it was uniquely capable of what paleoanthropologists—researchers concerned with the origins and development of early humans—call “symbolic behavior.” In other words, Homo sapiens had the unique capacity to use language and art to express and exchange ideas. The ability to think and behave in complex ways allowed us to plan, cooperate and out-compete the bigger, stronger Neanderthals, as well as other humans who did not possess these skills.[21]”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“The image of Neanderthals picking wildflowers to line the grave of a loved one really brings home how similar they were to us. Solecki claimed that his discovery revealed “that the universality of mankind and the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own species.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“the more humans learn about the world, the more insignificant we realize we are”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“fecal transplants from people with healthy microbiomes will one day provide a more effective treatment for depression than Prozac or therapy.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Many of the infectious diseases that afflict contemporary humans are caused by Neolithic pathogens.[29] Hepatitis B has been circulating in the European population for something close to 7,000 years.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Of over 500 strains of bacteria they tested, more than 90 percent were able to produce neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin that play a key role in regulating human moods.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“it has been estimated that viruses account for 30 percent of all genetic mutations since our species’ divergence from chimpanzees.[25]”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe. —Frantz Fanon”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“To understand the potential impact of contact between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, consider that Native Americans and Europeans had been separated for about 17,000 years before renewed contact literally decimated the indigenous population of the Americas in the sixteenth century. Modern humans and Neanderthals were separated for at least thirty times longer.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Across the whole of the Americas, the introduction of infectious diseases from Europe resulted in a 90 percent fall in the population, from about 60.5 million in 1500 to 6 million a century later. The global population fell by 10 percent. The decline in slash-and-burn agriculture and the reforestation of tens of millions of hectares of cultivated land resulted in a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is visible in the ice cores drilled by scientists in the Antarctic. The demographic collapse cooled the global surface air temperature by 0.15 degrees Celsius, contributing to the Little Ice Age in the early 1600s.[28]”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“One remarkable example is a gene inherited from a retrovirus infection about 400 million years ago that plays a crucial role in memory formation. The gene does this by coding for tiny protein bubbles that help to move information between neurons, in a manner similar to the way that viruses spread their genetic information from one cell to another.[23] In the laboratory, mice that had this gene removed are unable to form memories.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“The researchers then compared the microbiomes of volunteers who had been diagnosed with depression with those who had not, finding two types of bacteria—Coprococcus and Dialister—that were common in the guts of healthy participants but absent in those who suffered depression. Both of these bacteria produce substances known to have antidepressive properties.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Was the Neolithic Revolution good or bad for humanity? In what American political scientist and anthropologist James Scott calls the “standard civilizational narrative”—which is advocated by everyone from Thomas Hobbes to Marx—the adoption of settled agriculture is assumed to be an “epoch-making leap in mankind’s well-being: more leisure, better nutrition, longer life expectancy, and, at long last, a settled life that promoted the household arts and the development of civilization.”[14] The alternative to the standard civilizational narrative sees prehistoric hunter-gatherers as the real-world equivalent of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.[15] Humans lived in a milieu of happy abundance until we decided to take up farming. This may have had the benefit of allowing us to produce more food, but it also led to the emergence of despotism, inequality, poverty and back-breaking, mind-numbing work. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most notable champion of the “Fall of Man” theory, and more recently Jared Diamond argued that the adoption of settled agriculture was the “worst mistake in the history of the human race.”[16] Graeber and Wengrow argue that both of these grand theories oversimplify the argument. They assume that the adoption of settled agriculture—in particular cereal-farming and grain storage—led to the emergence of hierarchies and states. In the standard civilizational narrative this is the best thing that ever happened to our species; for Rousseau and Diamond it is the worst. But the link between farming and civilization is far from straightforward. The earliest examples of complex states don’t appear until six millennia after the Neolithic Revolution first began in the Middle East, and they didn’t develop at all in some places where farming emerged. “To say that cereal-farming was responsible for the rise of such states is a little like saying that the development of calculus in medieval Persia is responsible for the invention of the atom bomb.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“To understand the potential impact of contact between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, consider that Native Americans and Europeans had been separated for about 17,000 years before renewed contact literally decimated the indigenous population of the Americas in the sixteenth century. Modern humans and Neanderthals were separated for at least thirty times longer.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“There is archeological evidence that Neanderthals manufactured stone tools requiring cognitive skill and dexterity,[31] made fire on demand,[32] sailed from mainland Europe to Crete and the Ionian Islands,[33] produced glue from the bark of the birch tree,[34] and appear to have treated maladies with medicinal plants that had anesthetic and antibiotic properties: traces of DNA from poplar trees, which contain salicylic acid—the naturally occurring inspiration for the synthetic aspirin, and Penicillium mold, the source of penicillin—have been found in the calcified plaque of Neanderthals.[”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“ago, the idea that microorganisms in the human gut could influence the brain was often dismissed as wild…Not any more.” The study that inspired the editors to write this piece analyzed bacteria in the feces of more than 2,000 Belgians.[31] Of over 500 strains of bacteria they tested, more than 90 percent were able to produce neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin that play a key role in regulating human moods. As this ability is unique to bacteria that live in the bodies of animals, it seems that these microbes have evolved over millions of years to create chemical messengers which allow them to communicate with and influence their hosts. The evolutionary reason why bacteria produce chemicals that improve our moods may be that it makes us more likely to be gregarious and therefore provide them with opportunities to colonize other hosts.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Since the adoption of settled agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago, malaria has killed so many people that it is the “strongest known force for evolutionary selection in the recent history of the human genome.”[27] It is therefore not the strongest or most intelligent members of our species who were most likely to survive long enough to pass on their DNA to the next generation; rather, it was humans who had the most effective immune system to cope with the onslaught of infectious diseases, or those who had mutations that made their cells unusable to microbes. Lots of these mutations not only conferred resistance to pathogens but also had a negative impact on cell function. This suggests that humans’ struggle for existence was a fight against microbes rather than alpha males and apex predators.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“When animals first evolved, they reproduced by laying eggs, and most creatures in the animal kingdom continue to give birth this way. Then, between 100 million and 200 million years ago, a shrew-like creature developed the capacity to gestate her young inside her own body—an extraordinary evolutionary advance because a fetus is much safer growing inside its mother’s body. It is only possible because of the placenta, a temporary organ that attaches to the uterus and allows nutrients and oxygen to pass from mother to baby, and carbon dioxide and waste to travel in the other direction, without provoking a devastating response from the mother’s immune system. There is nothing like this interface between the placenta and womb anywhere else in our bodies. When geneticists looked at the gene responsible for creating it, they realized that it was almost identical to those used by retroviruses to produce the proteins that attach to cells they are infecting without triggering an immune response.[24] The scientists concluded that a crucial function of the placenta didn’t emerge gradually as a result of evolution by natural selection but was suddenly acquired when a retrovirus inserted its DNA into our ancestor’s genome.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“how insignificant and impotent our species is in the grand scheme of things.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“If modern-day Americans want to be historically accurate, then their gratitude at Thanksgiving should be directed to the Old World pathogens that made the settlement of Plymouth Colony possible.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“the adoption of settled agriculture was the “worst mistake in the history of the human race.”[16]”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“finding two types of bacteria—Coprococcus and Dialister—that were common in the guts of healthy participants but absent in those who suffered depression. Both of these bacteria produce”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“If one of our distant ancestors hadn’t been infected by a virus hundreds of millions of years ago, humans would reproduce by laying eggs.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Ottomans”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Scandinavian”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“our”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Across the whole of the Americas, the introduction of infectious diseases from Europe resulted in a 90 percent fall in the population, from about 60.5 million in 1500 to 6 million a century later.”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues