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Do reductionist cures select for holistic diseases? Adaptive chronic infection, structured stress, and medical magic bullets

Rodrick Wallace·Robert G. Wallace
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Abstract

With a generalized language-of-thought argument for immune cognition, we model how population-directed structured psychosocial stress can impose an image of itself on the coevolutionary conflict between a highly adaptive chronic infection and the immune system. We raise the possibility that, for successful 'evolution machines' like HIV and malaria, simplistic individual-oriented magic bullet drug treatments, vaccines, behavior modification, or other interventions that do not address the fundamental living and working conditions underlying disease ecology will fail to control current epidemics and may select for holistic pathogenic life histories which increase disease virulence.

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Rodrick Wallace, Robert G. Wallace. 2003-12-31. Do reductionist cures select for holistic diseases? Adaptive chronic infection, structured stress, and medical magic bullets. https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0311005

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