When bacteria have the last word, viruses fall silent Stone ax | Sciences

According to the FBI, the epidemic caused by the virus had its origin in an alleged accidental escape from a Wuhan laboratory. currently It’s just a hypothesis; An assumption that must be tested before it becomes certain.

However, no matter how many inexorable viruses casually escape from the laboratories that are arranged throughout our world, life on the planet will continue despite the fact that man, with it, has been completely exterminated.

On the contrary, if bacteria disappeared, life on the planet would be extinct in a short time. Maybe in two years. Because thanks to bacteria, the world we live in makes our lives possible. Stephen Johnson tells us in his book entitled Ghost map (Captain Swing, 2020), a work in which the famous American science tells how the cholera epidemic of 1854 devastated the city of London.

When we recycle our everyday waste, we are mimicking the work that nature does on a microbial level; A cycle part of the natural recycling process that keeps us alive

It’s funny, but when we recycle our everyday waste, we’re mimicking the work nature does on a microbial level; The metabolic cycle we can identify as part of the natural recycling process that keeps us alive. Without going any further, in London where Stephen Johnson placed us, the human excrement clogging the sewers formed bags of methane from the decomposition of organic matter by bacteria. In fact, cysts of methane can be deadly when sewer workers grab a flashlight torch near them in search of a piece of value.

These were difficult times for the proletariat, which sank to the bottom of the flooded economy. The characters in Dickens’ novels are as real as life described by the author who is famous for how he portrays the margins of Victorian London. The sordid landscape where even dog poop has value, because waste is not only part of the metabolic cycle of organic matter, but also of the metabolic cycle of an economic system whose predominant categories are productivity, exploitation, and consumption.

Returning to epidemiology and microbiology, it is worth remembering the diary of confinement written by Antonio Muñoz Molina with the title Back to where (Six Parral, 2021). Among its pages we find a strange note because of what must be scientific and literary at the same time, since the protagonist of the novel is a microorganism, a parasite known scientifically as toxoplasma It transforms the brains of rats, making them reckless, eliminating their fear of cats, and turning them into “tame prey” for cats. Once caught and ingested, inside the cat’s intestines, “the parasites have the conditions for them to multiply.”

The parasite “Toxoplasma gondii” transforms the brain of mice: it eliminates fear of cats and turns them into “docile prey” for cats. Parasites multiply inside cats

Dr. Boza, retired physician Antonio Muñoz Molina, tells his time, among other occupations, to recycle old fountain pens, turning them into useful things, ready to fulfill his destiny as one of those daggers that Borges refers to. His story and that they have a “simple tiger dream” for which they are encouraged to kill.

Viewed this way, every self-respecting being fulfills the metabolic cycle of profit and evil in equal parts. It is nothing new. It imitates the microscopic life of nature.

stone axe; is the where section Montero GlazeWith a desire for prose, he imposes his own blockade on scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.

You can follow Theme in FacebookAnd Twitter And instagramor register here to receive Weekly newsletter.