The Future of Germs: A Discussion with Jonathan Kennedy
New Books in Biology and Evolution
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Evolution and the Evolution of the Immune System
Some of the gene variants that allow people to survive massive pandemics are ones that don't actually confer greater strength or anything like that. So we have this weird situation where the immune system is better because it can withstand a disease but actually it creates other problems. I guess the classic example for this is something like sickle cell anemia, which changes the shape of the red blood cells and provides people who's ancestors lived in malarial areas with an evolutionary advantage.
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