On microbes

This excellent and thought-provoking story from the Boston Globe was reprinted in our local paper today. Below is a link and the first few paragraphs.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/02/25/of_microbes_and_men/

February 25, 2008
Boston Globe
Of microbes and menBacteria disappearing from our bodies mayharm human health
By Colin Nickerson

CAMBRIDGE - Not feeling quite yourself?

No wonder. In a sense, you aren't really you.

Scientists estimate that 90 percent of the cells contained in the human body belong to nonhuman organisms - mostly bacteria, but also a smattering of fungi and other eensy entities. Some 100 trillion microbes nestle in niches from our teeth to our toes.

But what's setting science on its heels these days is not the boggling numbers of bugs so much as the budding recognition that they are much more than casual hitchhikers capable of causing disease. They may be so essential to well-being that humans couldn't live without them.

In this emerging view, humans and their microbes - or, as some biologists playfully put it, microbes and their attached humans - have evolved together to form an extraordinarily complex ecosystem.