• Question: Why do some diseases kill you and some don't?

    Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter, Ramya on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      We call a diseases ability to kill its virulence. An organism with high virulence will infect a lot of people and the infection will result in high mortality rates.

      The virulence of a pathogen is determined by a number of factors including which can be produced by the attacking disease (e.g. Production of toxins or enzymes that break down the hosts cells).

      It is actually not really in the best interest in the disease causing agent to be too virulent otherwise it will kill all of its host and then itself die off. That is why some of the most “successful” diseases kill relatively few people but are able to infect a large proportion of the host organism.

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