Vitamin D affects bone growth, and, without a sufficient amount, the disease known as rickets would have been devastating to early human groups trying to survive in the cold, wintry weather of the north.
Given the numerous requirements for cilia in diverse cellular processes, it is unsurprising that complete loss of cilia is devastating to a mouse or a human being.
Combined human disease and livestock losses are frequently devastating to affected communities.
Like the madness in Hunt of the Unicorn and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in other mammals, this disease could break the species barrier through foodborne or other transmission and extend its devastating neurologic effects to humans.
The ancestor of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the simian immunodeficiency virus, which is found in a wide range of primate species and rarely causes disease in the primate host (Hahn et al. 2000) despite the fact that HIV is devastating in humans.
But the rate of change of computational power is so much faster than the rate at which human institutions can adapt -- let alone the rate at which the human species evolves -- that we will face devastating existential challenges to human civilization.
He also called for the use of certain critical antibiotics, regarded as the last line of defence against devastating human illnesses, to be kept from routine use in animals in order to retain their efficacy.
As executive director of Amnesty International USA, I feel proud of the tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience we've helped free, of the bad laws we've helped change, of the exposure that we've brought to devastating and insidious human rights abuses.
