Word: free
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Where was this all leading?" Snyder says he asked himself many times. "In 20 years would I have done nothing more than create a thriving colony of healthy, smart mice that are free of brain disease? You can't take it for granted that every medical advance in mice will also benefit people." But the evidence started mounting. Over the past three years, researchers have discovered that brain cells regenerate in primate-like tree shrews, marmoset monkeys and rhesus monkeys, all of which are closer to us on the evolutionary scale than are mice (except in Kansas). The real payoff...
...will appear, and the struggles against some of them will make the fight against the AIDS virus look like the opening battle of a war. Of course, by then there will probably be a vaccine for AIDS, and the shot will cost a few dollars or be given for free...
Viruses are moving into the human species because there are more of us all the time. From a virus' point of view, we look like a free lunch that's getting bigger. My grandfather was born in 1899, on the eve of a new century, when there were 1.5 billion people on earth. He died in 1995, and by then there were almost 6 billion people. Thus in one lifetime the population quadrupled, and it's heading for 9 or 10 billion. In nature, when populations soar--and become densely packed--viral diseases tend to break out; then the population...
That may seem impossible, but it's not unprecedented. In nature, Liss points out, there is no such thing as waste. What dies or is discarded from one part of an ecosystem nourishes another part. Liss says humanity can emulate nature's garbage-free ways, but it will require innovative technology and a big change in attitude...
Ivan Amato, a free-lance magazine and radio reporter, is the author of Stuff: The Materials the World Is Made...