Editing Multicellular Mankind (section)

== Colony Organisms ==

Humans themselves are colony organisms. Many have argued that [https://www.asimov.press/p/mitochondria mitochondria are living beings] and I agree. But not them specifically. I don't think the replication pattern alone makes them special. A lot of what we do today relates to ensuring the entire ecosystem of man arises in an environment it wasn't originally adapted to. Your gut bacteria colonize you from your mother through delivery (the old joke about who puts fun near the sewer system may be adaptive), ''demodex folliculorum'' colonizes you through cuddling, oral microbiome happens all the time but also through breast milk.

It's not that something is "out of balance" in a supernatural sense. It's just that over time an adaptive multi-species machine was built that carries, like a replicating colony-ship, a bunch of life forms through time. And this machine tuned itself accidentally through the process of evolution to a certain environment. Transforming the machine through synthetic 'hygiene' isn't necessarily improving something. Some times that's just the same as removing all the toilets in your house since they have the highest probability of housing poop.