Month: June 2020

Imagine yourself as the head of a funding agency (like the National Institute of Health) in which your job is to look at proposals for research projects and decide what projects to award funding to. Based on your readings this term, discuss a research project (or projects) that you would be most excited about funding as they relate to learning more about microbial influences on human health. As part of your response, consider what are we likely to learn from the project and how that might be important in future healthcare decisions.

I would propose something that would effect a large group of individuals and may be seen as a common need of most individuals. When thinking of this alone, I think of the effects of probiotics and antibiotics on human health and the microbes. I think everyone at least once in there life will need or take some type of medication in which they should have access to along with all the information including when and how you should be taking these probiotics. We have learned how they effect our health and can combat other negative effects of microbes which can be very important. This should be accessible to everyone and we should learn the effects on different groups of people, because as we have seen in previous articles, the samples are very small and are usually based on one demographic.

Part 1: Set a timer for 3 minutes, and make a list of as many human non-infectious diseases that you can think of that are influenced by microorganisms.

Asthma, Alzheimer’s, gastric cancer, brain cancer, PD, heartburn, pancreatitis, IBS, rheumatoid arthritis, crohn’s disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease autoimmune disorder, ulcers.

Part 2: Refer back to your Writing Exercise #1 that you completed the first week of class. Reflect and discuss how your responses have changed from week 1 to week 10, and what the most important topics you will take away with you once you have completed the course.

Looking back at my first post I think I listed three total, and that was probably after looking them up first. I have learned so much especially about the gut microbiome which I know I can take a lot of that information with me. I’ll also remember the different good and bad microbes and how they effect human health. When I previously thought of microbes I thought that was an all around bad term that only caused negative effects, and have learned a lot since then.

In W. P. Hanage’s article, he discusses the importance of five key questions when interpreting scientific literature:

• Can experiments detect differences that matter?
• Does the study show causation or correlation?
• What is the mechanism?
• How much do experiments reflect reality?
• Could anything else explain the results?

Starting with describing the significance of each and then which one is most helpful when discussing controversy.

The first question is important when looking for finer distinctions which technology today allows us to do. This is really important to closely related genes. Next we look at causation and correlation. This is important when looking at different factors and connections with microbiomes. Mechanism is going further than just looking at the causal relationship by determining the factors with multiple experiments. The experiments question looks at how symptoms may effect actual ill people rather than things that may just come up in an experiment. The last question is important because everybody is so different. This could take in to account diet, disease, etc.

When discussing controversy, I think the last question is most important. This is because usually when there are different views or opinions you use evidence to back yourself up. Sometimes the evidence can be different depending on the sample or technique used which is why asking what else could explain the results may help to clear something up.