Life, Interrupted

This article is incredibly exciting in so many ways. I will not begin to attempt to deconstruct and explain all the ramifications of retroviruses, diseases like MS, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, a virus that may have been attached to our DNA for sixty million years, and something like influenza triggering a cascade in an infant body, manifesting in a ghastly disease decades later.

I leave those aspects to you, reading the article. I want to address this:

Even more puzzling is the so-called birth-month effect: People born in winter or early spring are more likely than others to become schizophrenic later in life. It is a small increase, just 5 to 8 percent, but it is remarkably consistent, showing up in 250 studies. That same pattern is seen in people with bipolar disorder or multiple sclerosis.

“The birth-month effect is one of the most clearly established facts about schizophrenia,” says Fuller Torrey, director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
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And this is why, despite my fascination with science of all kinds, I am a storyteller.