Our theories about human disease are the product of current
fashion
1. ______. than we
would like to admit. But just as the moment influences the hemline
and the automobile fender, so too a type of
intellectual currency
2.
______. affect our understanding of how illness happens. Much of
the 20th
century is spent in pursuit of external causes of
3. ______. disease -
cigarettes, fatty foods, tick bites. Rather like the hero in an old western,
medicine’s work was to track down
the bad guys, round them up
4. ______. and squish them before a real commotion.
Antibiotics, vaccines,
heart pills - these were our weapons in the epic battle between us and
them, good versus evil. More
recently, although, we have cast our gaze inward, mesmerized by
5. ______. our own adorable DNA. Just last
decade, after 40 years of intense flirtation,
this relationship was consummated as we cloned the entire human genome.
Promise of improved health and
longevity soon followed,
6. ______. as we had apparently found our
way to the bedrock truths that underlie all illness.
But with this orgy of molecular self-admiration has come
a fundamental shift of thinking 7.
______. about human disease. We have moved from our long-hold
premise
8.
______. which the outside world (too much ice cream and
flesh-eating bacteria) threatens
9. ______. us to a belief that the
trouble rises from something much closer
10. ______. to home - our own double-crossing
genes.