Posted by voice on Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:06 | #

I appreciate the seriousness of the discovery but I have to laugh at the slogan “celebrate parasity”

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 06 Jan 2006 22:33 | #

James,

The journal link is telling me that subscription is required.  You might want to put a direct quote into your piece.

On the substance of the post, and straining as I am at all times for an end to our debilitations, I was wondering what might qualify as an emetic for said parasity - given the usual gate through which parasites are expelled from the body.

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 06 Jan 2006 23:42 | #

Strange.  The link works for me and I don’t believe I’m a subscriber.  I put up the abstract.

Posted by John S Bolton on Fri, 06 Jan 2006 23:58 | #

The applicability of these theories to human lineages seems assured as can be, especially if one considers that it is not only genetically-influenced behavior, but any which are stable across even very few generations of a lineage. Ewald looks at strains within a species, to find determinants of virulence of parasitization which can increase their representation ~within~ one species. The main conclusion from Ewald’s theory is a stern commandment: do not allow transmission from the more virulent lineages!

Posted by John S Bolton on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 01:21 | #

A geographic signature of parasity from homosity, having selected for virulent parasitization, is a ring of a distinct type surrounding a desolated core zone. Only a few, ultradamaging lineages remain in the core zone, which maps to the intial concentration of transmitted populations.
Jimmy Carter visited such a zone in the S Bronx, a reamrked on the intact welfare projects surrounded by burned-out private housing. with the mendacity and brazennness of a hardened vectorist, he pretended that the projects were a source of stabilization for those areas.
An exception to the ring and hole pattern occurs when continued immigration pours into what would otherwise become the hole. Heterosity allows for the cross-subsidization, without which this process is constrained. Efficiency of transmission governs the pace of selection for virulence.  There is a stability towards the inside of the growing rings of damage; reduction in population density limits the damage which the virulent lineages can do to each other.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 01:28 | #

By “within one species” you are presumably talking about species of parasite rather than a subspecies which acts parasitically on another subspecies of the same species.  While we may be witnessing a profound increase in virulence among non-human parasites—certainly there is much evidence for this—I’m also, perhaps more, concerned by the promotion of parasitic behavior within human subpopulations that are invasive.

Posted by Andrew on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 03:19 | #

Would it be silly to prescribe a course of Anti- Biotic’s to cope with the Obvious parasitic behavior, but what then when we have disclosed the Identity of a more sophisticated D N A of such a parasite that cloaked it’s Identity and has become that Virile strain that destroys its host. What level of alarm and action is needed to defend this biological species (ME) from such a abundance of That Virile parasitic strain –The less obvious- as our natural defenses have been disarmed and muted, we are then left to perish. No - stuff that.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 09:42 | #

with the mendacity and brazennness of a hardened vectorist

It appears that something similar happened to Detroit even without an exceptional amount of international immigration to that city.  I suspect this says something about the nature of the blacks that moved in from the south—that they represented a more virulent strain due to the need to migrate.  It also seems plausible that some of the maladaptive behavior of the US automotive managerial class might have some similar etiology to the maladaptive behavior of the plantation owners of the south.  Once you indulge yourself in owning African slaves, you have doomed your posterity, and that of those around you, to domination by Africans—and this might be a disease carried, not by white supremacy, but that white supremacy might be a disease caused by Africans specifically so that whites become debilitated and ownership of “the plantation” innures to the African.

Posted by John S Bolton on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:06 | #

Detroit is the canonical instance of this hollowing process from selection for virulence of parasitization, as between lineages of the same species. The theory implicating efficiency of transmission does not require that there be a separate host and parasite species, for this to happen. How could it, when the vectors themselves can even be inanimate? Detroit, in its day, was far in advance of anyplace of size, in terms of mobility. They built the first freeways, the first assembly line mass production of complex products, which, not coincidentally, happened to be transport equipment for the multitude. This sort of mobility, on the positive side, also hastens the flight of the host population from the interface of hyperintensified parasitization. Likewise, that location which goes first into the regions of high surplus of production above subsistence levels, is in a position to import hordes of mobile parasitical lineages, while the poorer place can’t afford to.

Posted by John S Bolton on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:24 | #

A population which gains some great increase in mobility, will bring with it the diseases to which it is adapted, more than others are.  Amerinds succumbed not only to European diseases, but to virulent malaria and yellow fever brought in by Africans.

Posted by John S Bolton on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:14 | #

What would be the metric for measuring an increase in heterosity, such as could be correlated with an increase in parasity? One could use total genetic distance in the population contained within a square mile or some measure of area coinciding with a limited jursidiction. Prof J Shepherd at Clemson used two races in counties to derive a diversity index which peaks at 50% of each. The racial diversity itself was found to increase crime, specifically interracial murder, with an elasticity of threefold above the level expected from increased opportunity for it. The diversity itself brought this crime rate up three times over what would be expected with no additional push from diversity. This would seem to be a pure heterosity effect. Griffe du Lion also found the interracial crime rates peaking at about the same level, but ~five points above the 50/50 level. Shepherd mentioned ‘racial competition’, as when infrastructure money is diverted to welfare-type expenditures, to explain how hostility builds up and manifests in crime rates.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 17:02 | #

The theory implicating efficiency of transmission does not require that there be a separate host and parasite species, for this to happen.

Indeed, <a >intraspecific parasitism</a> is observed.  I guess what I’m interested in seeing is some research into intraspecific parasitism arising from horizontal transmission—both observational and emperical studies.

Certainly when I wrote <a >the Genetic OmniDominance (GOD) Hypothesis</a> I was hypothesizing such in many species including man.  I also didn’t see there being a great need to distinguish between a subspecies that was coadapted with a parasite so that it expressed less virulence in the host, and the parasite itself. Greater immunity to the pathogenicity of the pathogen is what makes effective vectors.

How could it, when the vectors themselves can even be inanimate?

I’m not sure I follow here.

Posted by John S Bolton on Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:14 | #

I mean that the generalizability of the theory is high, including applicability to parasitical lineages in and of the human species, since vectors can include dirty needles, etc. Ewald’s emphasis on the special contrast between vertical and horizontal transmission as determinants of the virulence of parasitical lineages, does not limit the generalizability of the theory.

Posted by John S Bolton on Mon, 09 Jan 2006 09:55 | #

One indicator of transmission efficiency is the speed with which immigrants travel, if one thinks of immigrants as parasitical lineages in some cases, and as subject to selection for such attributes. Compare the speed of travel between three levels of transport technology associated with 19th and 20th century immigration; they’re about an order of magnitude apart. Say it were 2, 20 and hundreds of mph. isn’t there very high correlation to be observed between the intensity of parasitization by such immigrant cohorts, and the speed of their travel? This is in unexpectedly high agreement with the prediction from the theory that increments of transmission efficiency select for ever more parasitical lineages, if one would otherwise assume no correlation. One could compare the populations also for their reliance on net public subsidy realtive to the population in general, but this assumes that the growth of the welfare state is not itself responsive to immigration. The growth of net public subsidy classes, may be even more responsive to internal migration, though. What may happen, is that the availability of such subsidies scans the internal and external diversity for those lineages which can be most efficiently recruited onto the programs, and then expands them, but especially through immigration.
Recall that the change towards increased virulence of parasitical lineages can occur at the outset, before any reproduction from the selected lineages has occurred under the new dispensation; that which favors increase of virulence.

Posted by John S Bolton on Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:37 | #

Drawing out these principles further, ‘ring vaccination’ is an approach used effectively against virulent pathogens which depend on efficiency of transmission. Once they are left to adjust to what can be gotten away with locally, high virulence is disfavored. The main concern, though, is not to let in additional parasitical lineages, and to cause back-migration of those already present.