One of the main problems of reductionist thinking in health which considers each disease as complete and separate entities is that the real world is a joined up one. What changes you make in one place ripple through the networks and produce a wide range of unpredictable changes.
Here’s a recent rather unexpected story illustrating this.
Researchers at George Mason University have uncovered a link between smallpox and Aids. People who have been immunised against smallpox have a five-fold reduction in HIV-replication compared to those who have never been immunised. Could this explain the massive increase in HIV in Africa when it appeared? Smallpox was declared eliminated from the world in 1980 and nowadays only researchers working with smallpox are immunised. Could it be that stopping smallpox vaccination, left the population without some kind of protection against HIV?
It’s an interesting and plausible hypothesis.
How often, in Medicine, do we ever consider the potential increases in one disease as another declines. I often wonder what people are going to die from if the great targeted projects against heart disease pay off. After all, human mortality stubbornly remains at 100%, so which causes of death will we see rise, as other ones decline?
Heroes Not Zombies 
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