The Rising Tide of Refugees

Population pressure and dispersal

Currently, we are seeing a troubling increase in refugee numbers globally.

I link this to ever-rising human population numbers, which will be loosely correlated with rising population densities. (Loosely, because population density also depends on area.) Population density, in turn, will be the governing psychological factor, because it can be appraised on the basis of local sensory signals (probably multimodal) whereas absolute global numbers cannot. The basis of this hypothesis is the results of Calhoun's rodent experiments on overpopulation that he carried out in the fifties and sixties, which I am here extrapolating to humans, probably as Calhoun himself intended. I postulate that refugeehood subserves in humans the ecological function of dispersal. The underlying mechanism would be what was called "instinct" back in the day, a term that I think may still be useful in getting into one's argument quickly.

Do we have an instinct to disperse?

Instinct-governed behaviors are understood to owe nothing to learning and to be solely determined by the genes, and thus by evolution. In humans, of course, this position lacks credibility, so I am here speaking of that portion of the causation of our behavior that is due to evolution and can be assumed to play a biasing role rather than a determining one.

In refugee stories, there always seems to be a dichotomy between the nasty, evil bad buys and the hapless, innocent displaced persons, but, of course, this is naive. The most likely situation is that the refugee-producing adaptation has an aggressor subroutine and a victim subroutine, both in the same genetically determined program, and we all have a copy of both hard wired into our brains. Essentially by chance, one is activated in some people, and the other in others, when population density rises, and the ancient drama begins anew.

Now here's my plan

Because therapy can be expected to be more easily delivered to the victims than to the aggressors, I suggest that we start with them in seeking solutions. Their part of the dispersal program is likely to make them overly reactive to harassment and overly apt to conclude that they have no option but to flee, when this is simply not true. A related phenomenon that I have observed could be called "defensive overreaction," in which the person jumps to the false conclusion that an elaborate, expensive solution to their problem is required. A reasonable person, however, will try all the simple solutions first, one by one, evaluate the effectiveness of each, and proceed to the next more complex solution only if the less complex solution fails. I suggest that persons considering flight should be counseled and supported in this strategy, in the hopes of stemming the global tide of refugees.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

Stress Hormesis in Immune Function

 

Disclaimer 

If you are a cancer patient or at risk and are seeking a cure outside the medical mainstream, this post is not for you and offers no cures or protective therapies. This post is written for researchers.

A Different way to Support the Immune System 

Is immune cycling the answer to preventing cancer? The acquired immune system is a learning system that has to learn what epitopes to eliminate. Consider a person who experiences stress that suppresses their immune vigilance for a short time out of each year, after which the stress abates to let the immune function rebound. During suppression, the micro-cancers run wild for a short time, thereby growing large enough for the immune surveillance function to easily detect them upon its return. They are then dismantled, of course, and the immune system learns something in the process, making it a more effective anti-cancer system going forward. The analogy here would be to a cat playing with a mouse it has caught, which involves deliberately releasing the mouse and then catching it again. Since it is play, it is a learning activity; the cat is working on its game. 

Observational

Pre-civilization, human immune suppression may have happened regularly due to prolonged environmental stressors, leading eventually to cannier immune systems and lower cancer rates than we now experience. (According to Selye's general adaptation model, which represents current thinking, the final exhaustion phase of stress adaptation is associated with impaired immune function, but with purely an increase in susceptibility to cancer.)

The immune training paradigm articulated here agrees with the impression I have that cancer is a disease of modern lifestyles. Consistent with this, laboratory rats have a notable susceptibility to cancer, which can skew the results of cancer research, and they lead sheltered, indoor lives.

 

Experimental 

The following article may be relevant: Coventry, B.J., Ashdown, M.L., Quinn, M.A. et al. CRP identifies homeostatic immune oscillations in cancer patients: a potential treatment targeting tool?. J Transl Med 7, 102 (2009).  https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5876-7-102 

Summary and Future Directions 

Hormesis is said to be present when a factor that is toxic in large doses is required in low doses for normal functioning. Is cancer a disease of too little stress? The matter may not be so simple. The possible stress benefit may be a function of the exact time-course of the stress. For example, it may be associated with a particular frequency of variation of experimentally imposed stress. The six-to-seven-day period of the cited immune oscillations would be an obvious pattern of stress variation to test.

The week time period on which work and worship is organized may represent an unrecognized past cultural discovery of this cycle.

Does everyone have the CRP cycle whether ill or not?

Photo by Nina Mercado on Unsplash