Comment Re:Batsur (Score 2) 55
I still think we should be looking very close at Bats for how to build the ultimate response to viruses. Bats are not immune to viruses, but they just don't seem to be hurt by them, almost *any* virus. As best we can tell this has to do with a lack of inflammatory response. Likely an evolutionary compromise where evolution said "Ok, we wont stop viruses, but we will stop reacting to them", as a sickly bat is a bat thats unable to survive. Now, I suspect that just doing that to humans wont be very useful, as we actually do need that strong response to viruses as
Not disagreeing with you, but I seem to remember a paper once that talked about the fact that the human immune system appears to "over react" to many benign things and that this immune behavior may have been due to some evolutionary event in our history. One of the disadvantages of this strong response appears to be things like allergies that suddenly crop up for no apparent reason.