EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGINS OF DISEASE ESSAY

Recently, I saw Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ and it really got me thinking. In the film, as the story goes, these alien-piloted machines that had been hiding underground for thousands, if not millions of years, are taking over the earth, destroying everything in their path in the name of conquering our planet for themselves. The whole time I’m watching, I’m wondering how they will be beaten—if at all? At the end of the film we find out that they start dying off automatically- no army, no super-heros and no natural disasters saved earth, but microorganisms and bacteria- the bacteria we’ve all adapted to over the years through evolution of our species, yet of all the planning done by the aliens- no one ever thought that the thing that would destroy them, were the things they couldn’t see.
Reading this article reminded me very much of the movie- and furthered my thinking about evolution and the effect it has on microorganisms. What stunned me most was learning that our DNA controls over 10 trillion cells and even more cellular actions. All this is going on inside us while we get our mail...