Weakness and disease are inescapable facts of life. You could fall prey to a pathogenic bacterium that could eat away your skin. You could catch a deadly virus that could lodge in and weaken your lungs. You could be sick because of sunlight, or you could be sick because of depression related to the weather.

Sickness is inevitable, but suffering is optional. There are many therapies available to cure sickness, or to alleviate the pain of its symptoms. You can take medicines or be injected with them. These medicines are engineered in the laboratory to destroy infectious agents by either breaking open their cell walls, or targeting pathogenesis-related genes in their genetic material.

You can also be given vaccines to protect you from future infections. Vaccines are actually a mild version of the pathogen, and mimic the presence of the pathogen in your body. It is this mimicry that, in turn, triggers a mild immune response, which leads to your body producing cells that will keep you from succumbing to infections when you grow older.