Of Mice and Americans

In 2005 I was recovering from cancer. I was extremely tired, and bald from Chemotherapy, with a baby, who despite my wonderful wife and day care workers taking care of her most of the time, left me drained. I was also, as is normal, susceptible to catching colds and flu's. After the chemo seemed to work, I still couldn't travel much, as my immune system was compromised, so I had to, for the first time in my adult life, a chance to work on projects from New York, without flying or driving several times per week. Mostly I wanted to get strong, and do some creative work. My family company rented an apartment, which would serve as an office for me while I was stuck in treatment and recovery. In that same apartment was a Crunch fitness club, where I immediately joined. My goal was to regain physical shape, and actually be in better shape than I ever was before, and be creative and productive in the apartment, working on new inventions, a Ph.d dissertation and writing poetry. I was boxing every day with a trainer, then doing research, and writing every afternoon, while still having plenty of time for taking a nap, or reading a magazine. I managed to recover from the cancer and the treatment, get a Ph.d. and do the most creative work I had ever done.
This past week a very telling study was published in the New York Times (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/phys-ed-does-exercise-boost-immunity/?em) on mice regarding immunity and exercise. Three samples of mice were tested. All three were exposed to a type of flu virus that very dangerous for mice. The mice were given three distinct lifestyles while during their exposure to the virus. The first did not exercise, the second exercised very vigorously and the third did some light exercise. The basic findings may not be so surprising, but I think they are important. The mice who caught the virus most severely were the ones that did a very hard workout. The mice who didn't exercise at all did fine. Those who exercised moderately however had the highest health and survival rate. I like reading biology research, but it is sometimes very hard for me to think of these poor animals on this trial. Yes, the research is important, but is the method by which the results were obtained humane? I usually think it is worth it, and in this example it certainly does seem to lead us down an interesting path. Perhaps it will be possible to define the perfect amount of exercise to keep our immune systems strong enough to fight flues.
After reading this story, from France where I am living this year, I thought about that time in my life when I was a running mouse, trying to obtain the right amount of physical activity to keep me healthy, while not pushing myself into the grave even faster. What immediately occurred to me, is that while this study is real science, and what I am thinking is conjecture and experiential, Americans are very much like those two sickly groups of mice. The unique quality of my post cancer life was that it had leisure and tranquility, as well as exercise. For those few months I was the healthy mouse, exercising and relaxing, and avoiding illness.
So what about me, and my fellow Americans during the times when we are either recovering from cancer, or living in the socialist paradise of France? We are either rushing through the labor camp of a pressurized society, which has increased its productivity, but not increased the wages and benefits for most citizens. We eat while working or driving. We eat too much. And we are fat and sick. Or, we do something else entirely. We realize that we have nice athletic clubs, so we pay a lot of money to join them. We then push ourselves to look like our movie stars and models. We become in essence the over worked mouse, and we may look strong but also get sick. It seems that it is only with the extremes of forced vacation, or strict labor laws that we can become the healthy mouse.
So, after thinking all of this through I need to revisit my worries about the rather inhumane nature of animal testing. Perhaps the testing on mice is actually analogous to the way people in our society are treated. It is not just the clichéd "rat race" of business life, but rather the forced labor of existence, which may very well lead to shorter lives. The main reason the health care argument continues with such controversy in the United States, is perhaps because there are so many contributing factors to why we are so much less healthy, and rank so much lower than the rest of the industrialized world in life expectancy. It likely does have something to do with health care. It also though may go deeper into lifestyle. Maybe we are running ourselves physically and mentally to a premature death. This is a stretch, but from my own experience I felt more alive just after almost dying. This wasn't existential, or spiritual. It was mental and physical. Maybe after all the cruelest trials are being run on us every day.