Some initial questions, before I even read into any of the controversy:
Would there be an expected evolutionary benefit for Ad-36 to increase obesity?
How can we distinguish correlation and causation in this case? One possible confounding variable—high vitamin D levels are positively correlated with viral resistance and negatively correlated with body fat.
Have we or can we try this on experimental animal models? A controlled labortory test is the most effective tool for testing the biological effects of isolated factors (as in koch’s postulates)
Would there be an expected evolutionary benefit for Ad-36 to increase obesity?
I wouldn’t worry too much about this. A lot of pathogen effects have nothing to do with evolution directly, just with the human body being very complicated and it being very hard to do one thing without doing twenty other things at the same time.
For example, some scientists think a Coxsackie virus indirectly causes diabetes. The virus infects, the immune system does its usual job of mobilizing to fight the virus, but something about the virus “looks” enough like beta cells in the pancreas that the immune system gets confused and destroys them too. This doesn’t provide any benefit to the virus afaik, it’s just something that happens when you have a finite number of ways biological molecules can be configured.
Likewise, chlamydia can make people infertile, not because there’s some evolutionary benefit to chlamydia in making people infertile, but just because fertility’s a complicated process and in the process of invading the uterus chlamydia ruins all those fine-tuned organs.
I don’t know anything about this particular virus, but if it does increase obesity I would expect it to be more like the Coxsackie virus and less like some weird evolutionary adaptation (although those aren’t unheard of—see eg toxoplasma)
Would there be an expected evolutionary benefit for Ad-36 to increase obesity?
I don’t know. But the benefit, if it exists, might be to the virus or to the human.
How can we distinguish correlation and causation in this case?
It would be easy, if medical ethics permitted the experiment of exposing half the test subjects to the virus, without telling the test subjects that this is an obesity experiment.
Have we or can we try this on experimental animal models?
I believe there are animal model test results out there. You can easily find them by Googling, etc.
Some initial questions, before I even read into any of the controversy:
Would there be an expected evolutionary benefit for Ad-36 to increase obesity?
How can we distinguish correlation and causation in this case? One possible confounding variable—high vitamin D levels are positively correlated with viral resistance and negatively correlated with body fat.
Have we or can we try this on experimental animal models? A controlled labortory test is the most effective tool for testing the biological effects of isolated factors (as in koch’s postulates)
I wouldn’t worry too much about this. A lot of pathogen effects have nothing to do with evolution directly, just with the human body being very complicated and it being very hard to do one thing without doing twenty other things at the same time.
For example, some scientists think a Coxsackie virus indirectly causes diabetes. The virus infects, the immune system does its usual job of mobilizing to fight the virus, but something about the virus “looks” enough like beta cells in the pancreas that the immune system gets confused and destroys them too. This doesn’t provide any benefit to the virus afaik, it’s just something that happens when you have a finite number of ways biological molecules can be configured.
Likewise, chlamydia can make people infertile, not because there’s some evolutionary benefit to chlamydia in making people infertile, but just because fertility’s a complicated process and in the process of invading the uterus chlamydia ruins all those fine-tuned organs.
I don’t know anything about this particular virus, but if it does increase obesity I would expect it to be more like the Coxsackie virus and less like some weird evolutionary adaptation (although those aren’t unheard of—see eg toxoplasma)
For people or for the virus?
The “for Ad-36” means: “for the virus”, I figure.
I don’t know. But the benefit, if it exists, might be to the virus or to the human.
It would be easy, if medical ethics permitted the experiment of exposing half the test subjects to the virus, without telling the test subjects that this is an obesity experiment.
I believe there are animal model test results out there. You can easily find them by Googling, etc.