People's attitude to bacteria has tended to be negative during the years. Some bacteria can indeed lead to illness; however, not all are harmful. Contrarily, many have benefits to our health. The cleaning products ensured to kill germs. The farm animals were raised with antibiotics. All these behavior can lead to the decline of autologous bacteria in the human body after generations and increase the rates of people getting allergies or having autoimmune diseases.
After long-term cleanliness pursuing, people started to find ways to live with these invisible residents. Bacteria Make Living, a biotechnology company that provides a complete service to restore the harmony between humans and bacteria in a safe way, has become a choice for people.
People living in the near future rely on artificial attachment to bring the bacteria back into their bodies. It's almost impossible for people to maintain good bacteria in their bodies. When health conditions get worse, people ask biotechnology companies, Bacteria Make Living, for instance, for help.
"It's really easy to forget that we live in a microbial world," says Bohach. "They're emperors of our planet." [1]
In the long-term evolutionary process with the host, the microbiota forms a dynamic equilibrium of exchanging ecosystem with the host called normal flora. It is a truth that bacteria play an essential role in our wellness. Numerous medical research mentioned that being too clean is not good for humans.
In 1989, the British epidemiologist David Strachan was the first to suggest that the exposure to infections during childhood would provide a good defence against allergies in later life. It's an idea known as 'Hygiene Hypothesis'. Our bodies, says Dorothy Matthews, biologist at Russell Sage College in Troy, New York, may overreact to beneficial microbes, because our immune systems have forgotten how to live with them. [2]
The human body starts to hurt itself rashly.
Bacteria and humans have a symbiotic relationship; it can cause serious health problems when the balance is broken. The insufficient autologous bacteria and the overreaction to the harmless substance can lead to immune system disorder. People may need auxiliary every day to control their health condition.
Is this the condition that we would like to face? Absolutely not.
Is there any possibility that people finding a way to live with bacteria harmoniously again?
People's fear of bacteria may not disappear since their body health condition. However, they might find out the methods to live with these bacteria in a safe way.
Companies like Bacteria Make Living shows up, offering opportunities for people to access bacteria appropriately. As human starts to see bacteria in a positive way, it might have drastically change of their future. The way doctors treat patients probably change; even the definition of cleanliness may be altered.
Using the speculative design concepts to generate the future that humanity with chronic over-cleaning causes the insufficient of normal flora in the human body. Through Bacteria Make Living (BML), trying to explore the hidden crisis that may be aggravated by the people's quest to keep distance from microbes in the world of the continuing rampage of infectious diseases and the desire for cleanliness. What if new kinds of infectious diseases keep appearing? Which attitude should we have when facing the condition? Where is the line between clean and dirty?
Reference & Note
1. Michael Greshko, "How Many Cells Are in the Human Body—And How Many Microbes?" ,National Geographic, https://reurl.cc/AKVxje, January 13, 2016.
2. Katia Moskvitch, Can you be too clean?, BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), https://reurl.cc/l9m8YE, November 20, 2015.
3. Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System A Tale in Four Lives, December 3, 2019.