In a recent paper published Oct 6, "Nature Biotechnology", by scientists from Imperial College London, people are human bacteria hybrid, not pure human. It says that there are more bacteria cells in our body than human cells by a huge margin. You can read more by searching "are humans more bacterial than human?"
master vs servant Bacteria are throughout us and they perform many useful functions for us, like breaking down and creating some essential products for our survival. But your post makes one think who is working for whom?
if you count a bacteria is as an independent creature, on a per capita basis, your theme to just justify everything, yes, there are more life form living in and on our body than the human being him/herself
Scientists thought that they have discovered everything about the human body when they sequenced the human genome. But recent research on bacteria in the human body now shows that the human genome gives us a very scant information to understanding the key elements of human biology. Bacteria in our body works with our body immune systems to protect us from potentially dangerous infections. What is more shocking is that some human genes are bacterial in origin-this happened early in our evolutionary cycle but not found in the other great apes. This new discovery about the human body being a human bacterial hybrid will be very useful for new directions in health care, where personalized treatment to work with your own body's microbial fauna will be possible. Maybe the days of antibiotics are numbered.
No one thought that the genome product was the end of anything....it truly was only a beginning. It was kind of like like trying to understand a foreign language and finally finding all the alphabet.....but still not knowing any of the words (well, except 'beer' and 'bathroom' which everyone knows in at least 4 languages) The whole area is truly fascinating and full of promise.