Domestication isn't really the right word, but so far as I know, we don't have a word for guiding the evolution of another species in a way that suits us. And the answer sure seems to be yes. Montezuma's Revenge is far worse in Mexico than in the US. So is the water system in general. This much is well known.

In countries with bad water systems, waterborne diseases have an easy time. When a sick person uses water, they infect it, then it finds its way back to the population of healthy people. In the US, this is almost impossible, so, the same disease has to be spread another way. If it's a waterborne disease, that other way is direct person to person contact.

The only way the parasite can find a new host is if it's benign enough to not hurt a person so much. In a country like the US, when this type of disease kills or seriously injures the host, the genes that made that happen don't find their way back into the gene pool, and that strain dies out. Other, less harmful strains, continue to propagate. In countries with water systems a pathogen can spread through, there's no selective pressure to "be nice", and there's tremendous pressure to be harmful. This has been shown, as recently as 1991 in South America.

There's a flip side. Bacteria diseases are evolving resistance to antibiotics. The worse a sickness is, the more likely people are to be treated for it, and natural selection favors bacteria that develop immunity. On the other hand, if they weren't so harmful, less people would get treated, removing the selective pressure to become immune. Which means children, old people, and others with severe reactions, could be better treated.

I know some in here are hostile to science, learning, and human progress. So I'm curious on what grounds people will disagree with this and say that instead, we should just try not to improve the human condition?

You have laid out a series of facts, as you see them, you didn't actually ask a question.. Or are you just looking for someone to simply say "you're wrong"??

Or "you're right" or "that's an interesting idea but I see x, y, and z being a problem" or, well, whatever comes to mind. The question is fairly open ended.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

In countries with bad water systems, waterborne diseases have an easy time. When a sick person uses water, they infect it, then it finds its way back to the population of healthy people. In the US, this is almost impossible, so, the same disease has to be spread another way. If it's a waterborne disease, that other way is direct person to person contact.

If it's a waterborne illness, it resides on bathroom handles and knobs. The reason we have less prevalence in the West of these diseases is most people (including doctors) actually wash their hands.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

The only way the parasite can find a new host is if it's benign enough to not hurt a person so much. In a country like the US, when this type of disease kills or seriously injures the host, the genes that made that happen don't find their way back into the gene pool, and that strain dies out.

Successful strains have a long enough incubation and infection period before they kill the host to spread. The others die out. That's why most species are now extinct.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Other, less harmful strains, continue to propagate. In countries with water systems a pathogen can spread through, there's no selective pressure to "be nice", and there's tremendous pressure to be harmful. This has been shown, as recently as 1991 in South America.

There's a flip side. Bacteria diseases are evolving resistance to antibiotics. The worse a sickness is, the more likely people are to be treated for it, and natural selection favors bacteria that develop immunity. On the other hand, if they weren't so harmful, less people would get treated, removing the selective pressure to become immune. Which means children, old people, and others with severe reactions, could be better treated.

A bacteria is selected by the conditions that are prevalent. A certain amount of bacteria are immune to anitbiotics. But, because people don't take antibitiotics as prescribed, the drug resistant strains become more numerous in those people and they spread them, especially to hospitals where those people end up being treated.

Nice and not nice are just random gene mutations. Not nice bacteria and virus strains will have a short-lived time span but another one will evolve later on to take its place.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I know some in here are hostile to science, learning, and human progress. So I'm curious on what grounds people will disagree with this and say that instead, we should just try not to improve the human condition?

I thought you already admitted in another thread that all science is mere opinion

Originally Posted by joder

If it's a waterborne illness, it resides on bathroom handles and knobs. The reason we have less prevalence in the West of these diseases is most people (including doctors) actually wash their hands.

That's a possibility - another is that the real answer is nothing to do with water. But, what happens when you wash your hands? Where does the water go? Does it move in isolation to a treatment center, or does some of it leak into ground water near a village?

Originally Posted by joder

Successful strains have a long enough incubation and infection period before they kill the host to spread. The others die out. That's why most species are now extinct.

Some times, but within a particular pathogen (say E Coli) there are strains that are more and less harmful to humans, and these different strains have different survival rates.

Originally Posted by joder

A bacteria is selected by the conditions that are prevalent. A certain amount of bacteria are immune to anitbiotics.

The more often people treat a given sickness with antibiotics, the more often that particular genome will encounter antibiotics, and the more selective pressure there will be to evolve immunity. In a culture with no antibiotics, mutations that make a creature more or less resistant will have no effect on whether that creature survives and bears offspring. In a country where everybody takes antibiotics, when a strain becomes more immune to medicine, it will quickly spread through the population.

Originally Posted by joder

Nice and not nice are just random gene mutations. Not nice bacteria and virus strains will have a short-lived time span but another one will evolve later on to take its place.

Evolution of life will always be in some level of flux, although it can be more or less. But there are also extinctions, even of particular strains within a species. And that's the heart of what I'm getting at. Can we influence selective pressure to the point where we cause the most harmful pathogens to die out, leaving behind their more benign cousins?

We did it with dogs. We weren't going for dangerous - the question there was interesting. God gave us wolves, but European breeders and artificial selection gave us pit bulls and pointers.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Domestication isn't really the right word, but so far as I know, we don't have a word for guiding the evolution of another species in a way that suits us.

You really don't understand the larger scheme of things do you?

We humans exist a host plants for the germs of the universe and our final destiny is worm food.

They are the itelligent beings and we are the cattle.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I know some in here are hostile to science, learning, and human progress. So I'm curious on what grounds people will disagree with this and say that instead, we should just try not to improve the human condition?

I SOOOOOOO agree. Its like some people disagree just to disagree. It seems Bush cant utter a word without some liberal punking him, trying to point out where he is wrong! "But I only said Barney is a friendly dog!". Too funny. Sorry for the hi-jack, but you started it.

On topic, can we agree that the human population explosion is a serious threat to the human condition? If so, isn't the reduction of population an improvement to the human condition?

You see... I agree... we should improve the human condition.

Originally Posted by colbyt

We humans exist a host plants for the germs of the universe and our final destiny is worm food.

They are the itelligent beings and we are the cattle.

I don't see what you're getting at, here?

We can all agree that humanity has an interest in sticking around, and in making life better for ourselves, right? That's why we build bridges, so we're able to cross rivers without needing boats. We have other types of medicine. We have tools. Et cetera. We've found many ways we're able to influence the world we live in for the (short or long term) better. Very often, we make things better for ourselves in the short term, with disastrous long term consequences.

What I'm getting at is another lever we have at our disposal, should we choose to use it, that could make the world a better place for humans to live in.

Malaria used to be a problem in North America - in the USA alone, 6 million people a year used to be infected. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. It's been eradicated from the US. It reached a "tipping point" (I know a few mods here love that book - I haven't read it yet) when we started mosquito proofing houses. At the same time, the local strain got less harmful to people who got infected. This works in pretty much the same way, but it's a little more subtle. If a person is so sick they can't leave the house, other mosquitoes can't get to them, and the genes can't spread. When a mutation happens that makes the disease less harmful, it spreads more readily, and replaces the more deadly variant in the gene pool.

Given an unlimited budget, we'd probably want every human on the planet to have good, healthy, safe plumbing, anyway. Even if it had no effect on waterborne illness. We'd also want people to have shelters, and we've seen that when we're able to provide that, it has the icing on the cake effect of evolving certain diseases to be less potent.

I'd suggest that we can solve a number of these problems by working smarter, not harder. There's a fine tuned system acting on biology, and the better we understand it, the more power we have at our disposal, to influence the world for the better. For our better.

I'd also like to point out that when the dumb person takes antibiotics for something they shouldn't be taking them for, that ultimately affects us all. When it's just 1 person the effect is so small it might as well not be there, but bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics is a real problem.

i'm not sure if we can domesticate germs or diseases but I suggest that we should be safe with everything

What does your response mean, jv17?

I want a pet Small Pox

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I don't see what you're getting at, here?

I used that tongue in cheek icon for a reason.

Maybe the germs are the master species.

Have you ever really thought about that?

I haven't thought about that, or at least given it much serious thought, because, well, it's literature and not biology. And I think the reasons why that's so are pretty interesting.

It's very poetic to describe our relationship to our parasites as there being a master species - and presumably a "slave" species, too, by extension. It's very accurate to describe the same relationship as being more like an arms race we're both locked into. Germs are our enemies, and we're their enemies. It's not an equal, apples to apples fight, it's asymmetrical warfare.

Most of how Europeans took over North America had little to do with weapons, and not even so much technology. Over hundreds of years, we had evolved an immunity to a lot of diseases - pathogens we became exposed to through horses and other domesticated animals. When we landed in the New World, we brought these diseases with us. We didn't realize it, because we were largely immune to them, and the locals here were not. That's the long term, undirected arms race - I'm saying we ought to add some direction.

of course we can domesticate germs and diseases..germs and disease doesn't choose what nationality you are from..