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Long-s
doctrin holds that we are protected from fungi not just
by layered immune defenses but (
e ) we are mammals*, with core
temperatures higher than fungi prefer. The cooler outer surfaces of our bodies
are at risk of minor assaults-think of athlete's foot*, yeast infections,
ringworm*-but in people with healthy immune systems, invasive* infections
have been ( f ).
That may have left us overconfident. "We have an enormous (g) spot,"
says Arturo Casadevall, a physician and molecular microbiologist at the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Walk into the street and ask people
what are they afraid of, and they'll tell you they're afraid of bacteria, they're
afraid of viruses, but they don't fear dying of fungi."
Ironically, it is our successes that made us vulnerable*. Fungi exploit
damaged immune systems, but before the mid-20th century people with
impaired immunity didn't live very long. Since then, medicine has gotten very
good at keeping such people (h), even though their immune systems are
compromised by illness or cancer treatment or age. It has also developed an
array of therapies that deliberately suppress immunity, to keep transplant
recipients healthy and treat autoimmune* disorders such as lupus* and
rheumatoid arthritis*. ( i ) vast numbers of people are living now who are
especially vulnerable to fungi.
Not all of our vulnerability is the fault of medicine preserving life so
successfully. Other ( j ) actions have opened more doors between the fungal
world and our own. We clear land for crops and settlement and perturb* what
were stable balances between fungi and their hosts. We carry goods and animals
across the world, and fungi hitchhike on them. We drench crops in fungicides*
and enhance the resistance of organisms residing nearby.
(s) ELSE
