Evolutionary Defiance and Dysfunction
Not surprisingly, few if any researchers have turned to the evolutionary perspective for answers as to why American children have grown so prone to allergies and asthma over the last decade or two. They instead have focused on what pollutants, food ingredients, environmental depletion, etc., that likely have little to do with such trends. This merely serves as a distraction—most likely for ideological gain with regard to condemning Western civilization and creating global equality—from actually addressing the cause of a very real case of human devolution induced by flawed assumptions and the policies that result from them.
An even better example of how a lack of evolutionary understanding with regard to microbes is in the process of creating greater problems for humankind comes in the way of medicinal antibiotics. Indeed, in this case the denial and/or misunderstanding of evolutionary principles has led to intentional and targeted selection pressure that raises the microbial threat for humankind, and therefore decreases the survivability of humankind. For as medical science has increasingly developed drugs to kill microbes that present threats to humankind, what has typically occurred is that the drugs kill the less resistant, i.e., weaker, microbes more than the more resistant, i.e., stronger microbes.
As each time this occurs a strain becomes a little tougher overall, through the years strains become increasingly tough and difficult to eradicate. Accelerating this trend has been the regular failure of individuals to complete their antibiotic series that would have left no surviving microbes if used properly. But whatever the case, the result has been to create new breeds of supermicrobes that are in the process of becoming fully resistant to the current generation of antibiotics.
Therefore, as we speak, scientists are hard at work developing new types of antibiotics to overcome the better defenses of the new supermicrobes that humankind has played a great role in creating. In short, humans and their microbial invaders are locked up in an epic evolutionary arms race that could lead to major epidemics in the future if we humans fall behind.