Article: The Real Hot Zone: In a bold new book, evolutionist Paul Ewald argues that viruses and bacteria play a huge, hidden role in heart disease, cancer and other modern plagues.(Review)

Back in the 1880s, before tuberculosis had a known cause, experts attributed it to a combination of risk factors--things like depression, bad ventilation, insufficient food and "family predisposition." One standard textbook noted expansively that "the idea of infection being a cause... still prevails in the South of Europe." Fast-forward to the 1980s, and you hear similar accounts of peptic ulcers. The highly touted risk factors were stress, smoking, alcohol and, of course, "genetic predisposition." Never mind that an Australian researcher named Barry Marshall was successfully giving himself ulcers by swilling beakers of bacteria--and curing them with antibiotics. The ...

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