I spent the weekend in bed with the flu. Sunday morning, on the tail end of it, I popped a few Advil to bring the fever down so I could semi-enjoy Father’s Day. Was I making a mistake?
As I understand it, my body elevates its temperature as a defense mechanism. Evolution has been operating long enough to have a pretty well-calibrated trade-off between the losses of reduced activity from the fever versus the speed and probability of a successful recovery. Is my intervention distorting away from the optimum?
- Arguably I have private information about idiosyncratic conditions and Nature is calibrated only to the average state. Note that while this hypothesis justifies my use of Advil on Father’s Day, it also implies that I should go short on Advil on other days.
- And anyway Nature has given me the infrastructure to condition physiology on my knowledge of immediate environmental conditions. For example when I know that I am in danger, the body re-allocates resources to help me escape. What makes this any different?
- My objective is probably different. In Mother Nature’s eyes I am just a vessel from which offspring should spring forth. She could care less whether I get to practice Pink Floyd’s San Tropez on the piano with my daughters. So Nature’s revealed preference for activity is necessarily weaker than mine.
- But wait, my personal preference for non-reproductive activity is also something that Nature shaped. So what would explain the wedge?
- If I am making the wrong decision by taking Advil it’s not because I have the wrong preferences but because Advil is something Nature never expected. She has me well-trained when it comes to the fundamentals but she hasn’t had time to design my direct preference for the intermediate good Advil. She must leave it up to me to do the calculation of its implied tradeoffs in terms of the fundamentals. It’s only because of my miscalculation that I am making a mistake.
Cheap Talk 
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June 21, 2011 at 11:12 pm
twicker
So, part of the question here would be, did you actually have the flu (i.e., influenza virus)? And, if so, how high was your fever? Yes, Nature did “design” our system to have an elevated temperature to help (some) with healing; Nature also “designed” a variety of wee beasties (and their smaller cousins viruses) to be able to, you know, kill us dead. (One of the many reasons that I don’t get people who think that natural = better; hemlock is natural, Angel of Death mushrooms are 100% natural (organic, too), cyanide is natural). Thus, I don’t always put stock in simply going with Nature.
As for specifically going with Advil, it really depends on how high your fever was and on whether or not Advil is effective for you (and, more specifically, more effective than other options). I go for the naproxen myself; much longer lasting effects, and I seem to tolerate it quite nicely. As for the rest of the decisions above, note that you’re simply deciding between two treatments for your condition (Nature’s fever and Advil). It’s the same set of decisions that anyone must make when deciding between treatments (“watchful waiting” is a well-recognized course of action in medical treatment). You could have been debating the side effects of possible chemotherapy treatments (they have different side effect profiles, and, naturally, different people react differently to them); still a decision on differential treatment. Alas, I don’t know how well it’s been studied; probably a fruitful area of research.
Sorry you were feeling poorly over the weekend. Hope you still had a good father’s day!
June 22, 2011 at 7:52 am
Dirtyrottenvarmint
Surely you know better. You have mistakenly capitalized Nature in your reasoning and thereby impute an intent to “nature” which does not exist. You also falsely assume that “evolution has been operating long enough…” to do something, which is categorically not true. There is no “long enough” to evolution: mutant traits either evolve and survive or they do not.
Medically, fevers have some debatable benefits and some known dangers. There is no reason to believe that “nature” or “your body” knows anything or has any intention in increasing your temperature. If you have faith that some beneficial third party adjusts your corporal thermostat in your best interests, then by all means you should accept such charity if you so choose. But don’t fall into the trap of assuming that this belief is based not on faith, but on logical reasoning.
June 22, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Camilla
The medical sources I’ve read suggest that the usual antipyretics don’t change the duration of flu and cold viruses. I’d need a reliable statistical analysis showing otherwise to convince me to give them up.
Surely if it makes a difference, someone has quantified how much difference it makes.