Once we stopped being regularly exposed to pathogens associated with raw unrefrigerated meat, we lost our immunity.
Think of it like traveling to a country with low water quality standards. If you drink the water, you get cramps and diarrhea. The locals have immunity and their babies have immunity because antibodies to the pathogens are passed in mother’s milk. That gives the babies enough immunity to avoid illness when they start drinking the water. Frequent subsequent exposure to the pathogens maintains their immunity.
But if a person with immunity moves to an area with higher quality water and then moves back after many years, they can experience intestinal distress from the water because they lost their immunity.
Also, is not like those pathogens stopped changing and evolving.
why haven’t we simply evolved to be immortal smdh
We’re working on it.
Subbed!
We did, imperfectly. Stomach acid is one example – it kills enough pathogens that people who take medications to reduce their stomach acid are actually at higher risk of foodborn illness.
Not a scientist, completely speaking out of my ass; but maybe we did evolve to fight those bacteria a long time ago, and ever since we cook food, the bacteria has evolved past our evolvedness or something, idk good question
Also not a scientist, but humans lose immunity from each other if they spend enough time in isolation, so a few thousand years of not eating raw meat would also do that I reckon x3
Definitely not a scientist, our immune system can be very forgetful because it’s a waste of energy to memorize all the different kinds of bacteria that change/evolve over time.
Similar to today’s cops, white cells don’t care who or what they attack, but they will beat the shit out of it and deport it to El Salvador when told to. Hence auto-immune diseases.
Our immune system remembers just fine, but it’s not heritable. Every organism starts with a blank immune system (mostly, mammals can get some antibody protection from their mother, but have to learn to make their own eventually) and the system learns through exposure to the pathogen. No exposure, no learning.
