294
The Body Electric
The admittedly sketchy evidence to
date suggests that our elec-
tropollution is presenting us, and perhaps all animals, with a double
challenge: weaker immune systems and stronger diseases. We shouldn't
be surprised, then, at an onslaught of "new" ailments, beginning about
1950 and accelerating toward the future. In several cases, new maladies
have recently been described as coming from pathogens that previously
weren't capable of inducing disease, and this, too, shouldn't surprise us.
Among the newcomers are:
Reye's syndrome. First described in 1963, this condition begins with
severe vomiting as a child is recovering from the flu or chicken
pox.
It
then
progresses
to
lethargy,
personality
changes,
con-
vulsions, coma, and death. The mortality rate, initially very high,
has now been reduced to about 10 percent, but the incidence has
increased greatly.
Lyme disease. A virus disease carried by certain insects, it produces
severe arthritis in humans. It's one of several similar illnesses that
have appeared only recently.
Legionnaire's disease. This is a pneumonia caused by a common soil
bacterium that has found a second home in air-conditioning sys-
tems. The organism caused us no
recognized problems before the
initial outbreak in Philadelphia in 1976.
AIDS. Autoimmune deficiency syndrome is a condition in which
the body's immune system fails completely and its owner often
dies. The patient is unable to resist common, otherwise harmless
bacteria and viruses, and can no longer suppress the seeds of can-
cer that reside in all of us. At present, some sort of virus is sus-
pected as the precipitating cause.
Herpes genitalis. This disease isn't new, but its prevalence and severity
have increased tremendously in one decade. Sexual permissiveness
generally takes the blame, but a decline in immunocompetence may
be more important.
Certainly there are additional factors that may be contributing to the
rise of these and other new illnesses. Chemical pollution and the preva-
lence of junk food are two of the most obvious. However, these diseases,
as well as cancer, birth defects, and the other growth problems described
below, are on the increase throughout the industrialized world. So are
some of the major psychological diseases, such as depression and com-
pulsive use of all types of drugs, from caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol to
prescription tranquilizers and the illegal euphoriants, Although heart-
attack death rates have declined in the last five years (for no known