Both phrases contain the root word for hazardous. Of course, both contain "cleanup" as their phrase's tail. We might begin to separate these two by noting that germs came to our attention as disease causing forces. These forces destroy entire armies at one time. They may do so again, too.

Because germs carried in our blood transfer to other humans through infectious contact with others' blood, we call these germs "bloodborne pathogens." Bloodborne pathogen is a synonym for biohazardous blood. (Synonym means similar.).

Infectious Materials

A biohazard cleanup practitioner may care to know which infectious materials pose greater threats. It's important to reduce these threats for everyone, in any case.

This next line of text has special importance: Correlation is not causation - - an association between a particular infectious agent and a particular chronic disease does not mean that the agent causes disease. But, such correlations must receive strict attention. Here's an example. Most A students have more pots and pans in their home than most D students. This fact does not lead to a proof that more pots and pans in a home leads to better grades or vice-versa.

So when we talk about and write about correlations and causation in diseases we need to understand where we can and cannot go, logically speaking.

This leads to some logical problems in understanding the spread of infectious diseases. Most of the recent acceptance of infectious causation of human diseases, from cervical cancer to peptic ulcers to AIDS mostly follows on correlative evidence. We cannot change this situation, most likely. It's like in astronomy. Astronomers come to correlate the motion of stars and planets with their size, speed, and positions. By correlating the size, speed, and position of other stars and planets, they understand (know) what motions to expect from these far off bodies.

Crime scene investigation also uses correlations to help uncover criminal evidence linking perpetrators to crimes. They know before hand that their correlations are not the same as causation, but given enough correlations, perpetrators are found to be the cause of a homicide. Likewise, crime scene cleanup practitioners learn that a correlation between the flow of blood, its density, type of floor, temperature, and time the victim remained "down" gives an idea of damage caused.

Given time most crime scene cleanup practitioners learn to quote over their telephone because of correlations between responsible caller's descriptions. Correlations made by crime scene cleanup practitioners indicate an extent of damage caused by a perpetrator's crime. In this way crime scene cleanup inches its way to its own science. In crime scene cleanup science, we need to draw conclusions on the best evidence and reasoning available. Hypotheses about blood's migration and potential for disease causation need to find rejection or acceptance on correlative evidence. When experimental evidence may follow from experimentation, so much the better, but meanwhile, crime scene cleanup work must follow from correlations made to previous experiences and conjecture.

Finally, correlations give our self-employed, crime scene cleanup company owner, Eddie Evans, evidence for consumer fraud in Orange County, California.

Plague

Crime scene cleanup practitioners have a duty to our public. In some sense we clean environments for destruction of evolution's enhancement of diseases by mutation.

We must remain open to new ideas. Like medical science, the implications from evolutionary theories for our germ theory of diseases staggers our imaginations. We learned from patient abuse of antibiotics that germs adapt. Adapted germs go on to mutate again and again because patient's neglect to complete their antibiotic regimen, giving germs an opportunity to adapt to antibiotics.

Imagine trying to control diseases caused by germs without a theory of evolution: Impossible. Such a theory gives medical science solutions to antibiotic resistance by suggesting ways germs change, evolve. New strategies emerge as we look at histories of diseases. We know medical science uncovers bad genes, bad chemicals, and bad fixes (blood letting?). So then, what about evolutionary arguments for the long-term survival of diseases in the wild -- in humans?

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Evolutionary Theory

According to history's greatest cataloger, Charles Darwin, natural selection favors parental characteristics for individuals' survival, not a species. These individuals go on to reproduce whatever characteristics favored their survival in a given environment. So now I must write as a bird might walk, away from my chosen subject, biohazard cleanup, but for a moment.

Example from "Darwin's Finches"

What follows applies to bloodborne pathogens found within human beings. I use more common examples from biology for clarifying the potential for mutation within any population of bloodborne pathogens. So here I use a modern-day theory of evolution to show what to expect in evolutionary terms.

One of Darwin's favorite examples remains today in the Galapagos Islands. Any one of a species of finch found on these South American islands support 19 species of Finch, tiny birds that depend upon the variability of their beaks for survival. This means their beaks' length, diameter, and shape allows each Finch to gather food from trees, cactus, and so on.

Their beaks' length and diameter varies from species to species. In fact, a Finche beak accounts for its survival. A population may fall from 10,000 to 300 in any one year, depending on environmental pressures and each individual's beak. For instance, individuals depending upon the length and narrowness of their beaks to feed on grub found deep within trees survive while others perish. Simple beak variations among a species accounts for individual survival. In this way nature selects more favored members of a species.

So how does this have anything to do with biohazard cleanup, let alone crime scene cleanup?

Blood cleanup following a homicide becomes a matter of reducing and eliminating bloodborne pathogens and other infectious materials. It's important to annihilate an entire species of infectious microorganisms. Allowing any one organism to survive creates conditions simi liar to those created by allowing germs to exist after an antibiotic regimen. This is the same logic used my medical doctors when they insist that patient take all of their antibiotic pills. All invading germs must die so as not to allow survivors to adapt, mutate, and cause a new strain of infectious materials. Such materials gain an immunity to antibiotics, a growing problem in medical science.

I would be naive to say such risks actually exist in a biohazardous environment during crime scene cleanup; however, I would be negligent as a professional cleaner to suppose any other logic or conditions applied to a crime scene cleanup for elimination of biohazards. I know too well how mutation works for survival of individual Finches on the Galapagos Islands.

So I've come to believe how easy it is to prove evolution's role in the past and present. As a result, for public health reasons, we must assume that bloodborne pathogens and other infectious materials will mutate as others have in the past.

This phrasing must keep readers on track:

It is NOT survival of an entire species that parents' characteristics favor. It IS parents' characteristics that favor individual survival in a given environment.

Put another way, it's the individuals that lead to survival of a species; not the species that leads to survival of individuals. We must not allow this biological fact to become dogma in terms of crime scene cleanup. In a big way, crime scene cleanup demands an end to capitalism as perceived by libertarians; otherwise extinction of species becomes an assured fact. (See crimes against nature) in a big way of thinking.