[zaknil]

> put the lungs into a constant state of readiness, allowing fast responses to almost any invading germ

Succeeding at this would prove that our bodies have the capacity to do that but evolution "tuned" the system differently. A corollary would be that this vaccination is probably a net negative for public health, even if nobody'd really know why.

[xyzzy123]

We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past.

Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.

[isodev]

> you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal

I like the term ancestral defaults and indeed, we've come a long way since then and our biological and environmental reality is substantially different.

There is this book series Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada which imagines a future where technology has advanced enough to allow one to tweak their genome as easily as we use apps on our phone today. It was a fascinating read.

[qsera]

>our biological and environmental reality is substantially different.

As true as it might be, that does not mean that it is possible to work around evolution to change ourselves to fit better with the new reality.

[qsera]

>We're not really calorie constrained anymore

Why do you bring this up? It seems a weird hypothesis to bring up given that the parent comment did not suggest the possibility...

[ndsipa_pomu]

Not the OP, but evolution will often select for less energy expenditure as most animals are calorie constrained or at least during certain times of the year (c.f. animals that hibernate to survive low calorie availability).

It seems plausible to me that the immune system might be calorie intensive to be on full alert all the time. However, I suspect that having the immune system be more active will likely lead to other complications such as autoimmune disorders or even something as common as hayfever.

[qsera]

An always full alert immune system won't have any lee way to address any onset of an infection, and also considering that pathogens also evolve to by pass the increased alertness, this will probably be catastrophic for the species.

That is unless of course like bats, this was the result of evolution and natural selection. But bolting on like this vaccine do it, yea, going to be pretty bad.

[tialaramex]

No. Evolution is not "tuning" it's just statistics at a huge scale. The high likelihood of back pain, the lack of important sensors, broken synthesis pathways, this is not a carefully tuned system, this is just blind luck plus statistics. Which means we can do better because we're purposeful.

[qsera]

>we can do better because we're purposeful.

"Purposeful" does not help if we are mostly clueless.

[glenstein]

We know enough specific things about immunology and about the illnesses we're trying to avoid to be something more than clueless and we're learning more all the time, including about the potential applications of "everything vaccines" that are being tested for potential programmatic use.

[qsera]

Don't we have a problem of ever increasing auto-immune diseases? If we know "enough" then I think we should be able to make it go away. Until that happens, I don't think humanity can claim to know "enough".

Also, evolved systems are hard to reverse engineer.

https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

If something simple like an electronic circuit with comparatively short evolution can end up with mysterious, un-intutive and complex inter-dependent behavior, imagine how non-understandable an immune system that evolved over millions of years can be..

So I still think we are mostly clueless, and it is nearly impossible to safely engineer changes into something that was not engineered in the first place...

[glenstein]

I would flip that framing around entirely. If we were clueless, we would not have had a centuries worth of progress of any kind whatsoever, let alone be brought to the point of testing general purpose vaccines, something that would have been unthinkable perhaps even a decade ago.

Electricity is a convenient example, because it's indisputable that we have leveraged it to do real work based on real understanding. I suspect any and every area of knowledge is subject to a kind complexity crash where the combinations of variables outstrip our ability to track them. But treating that like it negates the knowledge we do have is almost literally what it means to miss the forest for the trees.

[qsera]

It does not negate the knowledge that we do have. But we should also acknowledge that certain undertakings are impossible to do safely with the amount of knowledge that we do have.

[lifeisgood99]

There's no wise guiding force behind evolution. It's all guesswork.

[qsera]

It might be guess work, but it has got a ruthless filter called natural selection and really long time to get here.

So I don't see your point. It is really tuning for surviving within the constrains.

[senordevnyc]

And the constraints are very different now…

[qsera]

Maybe, but that does not mean that it is possible to work around evolution to change ourselves to fit better with the new constraints.

[cassianoleal]

There's no guessing force behind evolution. It's just statistics at scale.

[qsera]

Yea, so what is the point in this context?

[Modified3019]

In the agriculture world, application of harpin proteins (https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/regi...) can be used to help treat diseases by inducing a defense response. Mind you, it’s not a standalone treatment, but helps make applications of fungicides and the like far more effective.

Pathogen defenses can roughly be thought of having a metabolic cost at the very least. Meaning if there’s no selection pressure (such as death) otherwise, then it often ends up being more optimal to not have a defense active until it’s needed.

Problem is we have a global distribution system that is forcing organisms that have previously evolved into an equilibrium with the disease complex in their area, to encounter multiple novel threats in rapid succession. Like how aggressive species of downy and powdery mildews are now everywhere in the US. Giving plants a boost by inducing defenses early on helps them resist the onset of infection and helps treatment succeed.

[Izkata]

Don't bat immune systems work like this? Except they end up in equilibrium instead of eliminating the viruses, which is why it's so dangerous to come into contact with them.

I think almost everyone would avoid this if it meant you became deadly to your dog or cat.

[latexr]

Fascinating. Looks like you’re right. However, disease and other stressors can disrupt that equilibrium.

https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2020/bat-super-immun...

Which means bats are the Mr Burns of the animal kingdom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8

[danielbln]

Next up: scientists are creating the everything vaccine for dogs and cats.

[gignico]

Evolution is not a process toward better quality of life and life expectancy of individuals. As long as enough individuals can reach the age to procreate in their environment evolution is done. Evolution didn’t train our bodies to reject the diseases we already have the vaccines for neither, so your reasoning would apply to smallpox as well. And what about viruses appeared after Homo sapiens evolved (such as HIV)?

[mattmanser]

I don't think it works like that, from my recollection of the uni courses I did 20 years ago.

Even a small advantage like 1% will quickly propagate in a population, because it's about advantage over 1,000s of generations.

That this disease defence CAN be turned on, means some people would have at some point had a genetic mutation to turn it on.

As the GP pointed out, therefore it must be a net negative from an evolutionary stand point.

I also suspect it would be calorific consumption, as someone else said, so it might be ok.

However, there are plausible other explanations. For example there are medical conditions that result from a too aggressive immune system and it could instead be reducing the chance of that occuring.

[gignico]

The problem is implying that “if evolution did not do it there must be a reason”, because 1) it makes evolution look like an engineer evaluating trade offs, which is not and 2) it considers the current state of affairs the final “product”, which is not. For example, flowers did not exist in the Cretaceous, so somebody looking at what evolution did until then would say “if evolution did not invent flowers, then we’d better not do it”. But of course that’s absurd.

Also as I said evolution is not a process towards a goal. There are 8 billion people around the world which proves Homo sapiens is quite fit for its environment so the pressure to evolve further features is quite low.

[mattmanser]

pressure to evolve further features is quite low

I'm really sorry, but you're really misunderstanding how evolution works.

Worth reading something like the Selfish Gene if you want to understand it a bit better.

There are always reproductive pressures and there are always genetic variations.

Modern civilization and medicine has simply changed what the pressures are.

As an example if a genetic variation occured tomorrow which gave resistance to spermicide, within 100 generations that variant would probably be quite successful and prevalent in the human population.

[gignico]

I know about reproductive pressure and I’ve read The Selfish Gene. What you say is correct but does not explain that “if evolution did not, better not do it” attitude of the original comment, which I think is wrong for many reasons as I’ve wrote.

[Escapado]

I would say you are both right in that if you have two competing variables (on-time for the defence vs calorie consumption), when the main causes of death before procreating were infectious disease and malnutrition before modern times, I would expect some equilibrium to be reached and we have not had that much time to evolve since caloric scarcity in the western world was a solved problem for large swaths of the population.

If in the future we could trade a few hundred extra calories per day for a great immune system (without auto-immune side effects) we would have found a nice cheat code!

[awakeasleep]

Thinking about your point- I bet we do not know if some people have it on or not. It feels like something that would have to be specifically investigated.

[MathMonkeyMan]

Maybe not! Let's find out.

[allreduce]

I'm in my armchair thinking autoimmune diseases.

[qsera]

But that just means more $$$ for the pharma, so not sure why that would bother them.

[OutOfHere]

Autoimmune diseases often are due to suboptimal vitamin D3 softgel intake (typically 4-5K IU) or suboptimal magnesium intake (300-400 mg). Bringing both to highly optimal levels should minimize the risk of development of new or worsening autoimmune diseases, although it won't revert any existing ones. Low dosing either one doesn't work in this context.

Those who reject this even after reading the following 100% deserve to suffer, but worse yet, they make others suffer, often due to their conflict of interest as shills for pharma. The general commitment to truth is well below zero for those who stand to gain from its suppression.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-vitamin-d-deficiency-...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-vitamin-d-supplements...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-magnesium-vitamin-d-i...

[ndsipa_pomu]

Whilst I agree that there's a lot of people with D3 deficiency (at least during winter), it's also worth being careful of taking too much D3. Typical signs of too much D/D3 are nausea, loss of appetite, more frequent urination, thirst, weakness, confusion or brain fog.

It's worth being aware of that as the recommended limits for vitamin D are laughably too small, so it's common for people to take much larger amounts. I believe that 4k IU is considered a safe adult dosage.

[mitchbob]

But "false positives" could be very likely, resulting in chronic inflammation or, worse, the cytokine storms that made COVID deadly. I'm guessing there needs to be some slack in the system.

[IAmBroom]

Evolution and optimization are not at all the same. Evolutionary pressures cease when "good enough" is achieved.

Able to reproduce, but succumbs to ailments quickly after? Eh, good enough.