One of the sayings that most people have heard is that "Ignorance is bliss". Well, maybe so, but there's no doubt that ignorance can turn around and bite you where it hurts. The all too human trait of assuming we know it all often leads to disaster. Take antibiotics as an example. When first discovered, it was quickly assumed that we'd won; that the era of microbial diseases was over. Being human, of course we immediately began to abuse that marvelous discovery, taking antibiotics indiscriminately. Not surprisingly, microbes quickly evolved immunity to antibiotic after antibiotic. For many bacterial diseases, we're now down to a single antibiotic that's still effective.
There's yet another layer of ignorance. We've just recently
learned that such resistance doesn't have to evolve separately in each kind of
bacterium. Genes for resistance are shuffled from one species to another, and evolution
of immunity in one kind soon is shared with other bacteria. We're all taught by
parents that sharing is a good thing, but this goes more than a tad too far!
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.