The prion is a “fitness” catastrophe that gives us clues as to where nature’s gambit might lead humanity. Perhaps the long-term evolutionary cost of our complexity is too high, with our survival as a species ultimately depending on our ability to mitigate its fitness cost through increasingly arduous therapeutic solutions.
这一“异常软弱的蛋白质”的极端例子说明，由于物种规模太小，我们暴露于极高的基因风险之中。朊病毒是“健康”大灾难，它给了我们一个关于自然开端是如何形成人类的线索。也许我们的复杂性的长期进化代价太大了，我们作为一个物种能够生存下来，最终取决于我们通过越来越复杂的治疗方案降低健康成本的能力。但愿我们能够经受考验。