[rkk3]

Appendicitis is activated by inflammation and "not a problem" for most people. The Appendix organ hides in the body and waits to become inflamed to attack.

It's certainly in the realm of possibility EBV or other viruses have no benefit, but the history of medicine is harmful medical intervention after harmful medical intervention...

[elevaet]

In defence of medicine, its history (of the last 100 years or so anyways) is filled with beneficial intervention after beneficial intervention. Never have humans lived longer and healthier, with such low rates of infant mortality and lack of disease.

[sudosysgen]

It's almost certain that EBV has no benefit. We have a nice control group of people without EBV and as far as I'm aware absolutely no benefit is apparent.

[ck2]

Agreeing with you but it's crazy to see people hand-wave "EBV is fine".

Everyone seems to have to go through life the hard way where "nothing is a problem don't overreact" until suddenly it's destroying your life and then it's too late.

EBV can turn to mono and once your body is making auto-antibodies you are screwed for a long time, maybe the rest of your life because your quality of life is just gone. It will keep coming back every time you get weakened.

How about VZV turning into shingles? If you ever had a shingles attack it will change your whole perspective for life on illness and pain. If you could eradicate VZV from your body to prevent that you most certainly should, EBV too.

[sudosysgen]

Indeed. It seems quite insane to me. That a virus that causes hundreds of thousands of cancers and many more debilitating illnesses every year could be reasonably expected to be fine, let alone beneficial is just baffling to me.

[331c8c71]

The non-carriers are not a control group unless we are 100% sure that the assignment is random. I find it hard to believe when the vast majority of population are carriers.

[sudosysgen]

It's not random. More developed countries and richer people in more developped countries have a lower incidence rate. The chance of catching it increases with age. The part of the population that doesn't catch it seems to be avoiding it by luck, higher hygiene, and fewer vectors. See: https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/208/8/1286/2192838

[blix]

As recently as 15 years ago we were 'almost certain' that the appendix had no function. Oops.

[sudosysgen]

If a large portion of the population was missing the appendix naturally with no drawback, it would have almost definitely held.

[blix]

The first recorded appendectomy is in 1880. Probably the first major study conclusively indicating adverse consequences was published in 2014.

It did hold for a long time, until it didn't because we found scientific evidence that said the opposite. Are you really so confident that no such evidence could ever be found for anything else? There is so much we don't know about the human body.

[sudosysgen]

That's really not it. There is a heavy bias that the appendix is somehow beneficial because we evolved to keep it for some reason (though it could have been just a relic).

EBV is a virus. Our immune system does whatever it can to get rid of it. It causes significant illness. There is absolutely no reason to believe it is beneficial whatsoever.

If you think it is, you can prove it. We have literally hundreds of millions of people walking around that never got EBV. Go on, and find a statistically significant way in which EBV is beneficial for them. You have the burden of proof here.

[blix]

If that bias is so strong, why did people believe the appendix was vestigial for a 100 years?

If the immue system does "whatever it can" to get rid of EBV, why is it happy to let EBV lie dormant in most people who have it?

Most of what you said can be said about bacteria too. It turns out bacteria can be helpful and blindly applying antibiotics is linked to the rise of numerous autoimmune diseases. It took quite a long time for us to figure it out.

I think the burden of proof is on the people who want to modify other people's bodies (i.e. prophylactic EBV vaccination). You can do what you want to yourself. But unless we want to repeat the mistakes of the recent past we should be ~really~ sure there is no reason the body keeps it around lying dormant. One could even say this is a larger "control group" than the one you are talking about.

Besides, correlational medical studies can't even determine if eggs and coffee are good or bad for you. If we really want to answer these questions adequately, we need better tools.