h a l f b a k e r yBaker Street Irregulars
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ever wondered why some days you wake up and you are ill? for no reason atall. no drinking session the night before, no going out in the cold with wet hair. just ill.
the problem is that you don't own and use an 'immunising worktop'. you are not bombarded by enough germs for your body to learn to
combat them...
-- this worktop needs a wash
>> no, the dirt seeps out of it rather than falling on it
-- so it's made from a self-dirtying substance? for a reason?
>> yes. it's why i never get ill. if i eat food thats been in contact with this worktop, my imune system is continually updated.
-- like the news.
>> just like the news.
the immunising worktop - with micropores, and renewable germ capsules which are fitted beneath the worktop and seep germs to the surface...
Dirt is good for you
http://news.bbc.co....d_637000/637757.stm
Story about allergies and dirt. It's from the BBC so it must be true! [dare99, Feb 25 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]
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As a concept, this is nowhere near as stupid as it appears. I've long maintained that much contemporary illness is the result of being over-coddled. The body never gets the chance to practise on small doses of bugs, so when the real thing comes along, suddenly we're laid low.
Conversely, given that "a man must eat a peck of dirt afore he dies", perhaps avoiding eating dirt means that you'll never die. |
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Society has baked this one : it's called vaccination |
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Millions of people die each year in the third world because of the lack of basic sanitation. A similar situation existed in the industrialised west until the late nineteenth century. Eating bacteria does not make you healthier, it makes you ill. Whether you're a carnivore preparing raw chicken, or a veggie with lettuce, it's essential to follow hygiene rules. Unless you want to be horribly ill and die. |
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There was a thing on TV last night about it being good that toddlers get so many "bugs" at daycare centers. That way, they catch most of the cold viruses before entering real school, and thus have fewer "sick day" absences. |
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i dont mean to imply the degradation of sanitary levels in the kitchen to that of the third world, or indeed the average gutter. obviously eating the wrong things in the wrong quantities could kill you, (e-coli cases abound - and even standard baked beans have been known to kill) but if your intake of germs were controlled and continually updated, surely more illnesses and indeed, allergies, could be combated? |
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currently vaccinations are only available for major life threatening diseases, which is fair enough, by why not try to protect people against other illnesses / allergies? |
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>> from http://www.dr4kids.com/medical.htm |
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"Another study found early exposure to cat dander decreased the risk of asthma, though not necessarily most allergies. these findings could be in line with the "Hygiene Hypothesis", that Americans grow up too clean and that lack of environmental contaminants means immune systems overreact when encountering allergy-inducing substances." |
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This fixation with hygiene again! I agree, people are exposing themselves to fewer and fewer germs, thereby reducing our immune systems diversity (if it never encounters a germ, how will it build immunity?) |
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Immunizing everyone on the planet will only result in more superbugs. Not that we should go out of our way to be exposed to horrible things, but the basic premise, especially for children, is great. |
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Very few people in "half-developed" countries (Eastern Europe for example) have allergies, asthma or similar diseases. That's because everything used to be much less hygienic. |
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Also, very few children growing up on farms are allergic to animals or pollen, whereas city children often are. |
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// Not that we should go out of our way to be exposed to horrible things // |
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it worked for howard hughes. until he died, that is. |
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Competition between hosts and parasites has gone on throughout evolution. Hosts (e.g. people) have continually evolved new ways of fighting off parasites (e.g. bacteria), and parasites have constantly developed new ways to get round the new defences.
There will be problems if people are exposed to toxins they have not yet experienced, but it should be noted that a hundred years ago most children died before their fifth birthday, so I would guess some unpleasant things were killing them then also. People in the affluent societies of today are healthier than ever before. |
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I'm talking out of my hat here, but aren't there are some 'germs' that humans cannot develop a resistance to, like e. coli and botulism toxin for example? I agree with 'stu here. This certainly should not be encouraged. |
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Having said that, I've also made my views on anti-microbial products known in an other idea. |
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the current fashion in the UK for stopping your kids from being combination-vaccinated against Measles, Mumps and Rubella, preferring instead to wait and see, even if you can't afford the separate vaccines, is dangerous. Not only because the illnesses can be fatal or at least unpleasant, not only because the tiny and contentious statistical correlation with the onset of Autism is being over-reported and illustrates far better the media misrepresentation of science than the flirtation of doctors with imperfect preventions and remedies; the greatest problem with this is that a low vaccination level of 75% provides these bugs with tens of thousands of hosts per year in whom to mutate at will and potentially render useless the only available vaccine for 100% of the future years of children. That's overprotection for you. |
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I, and thousands of people my age, contracted measles and mumps as children, and suffered no lasting effects. I'm at a loss to understand why they are suddenly regarded as so dangerous that people are willing to run the (however minimal) risk of inducing autism in their children. Given, however, that vaccination is sought by some, why should the individual treatments not be offered, as well as the combined one? This would be by no means the only case of the NHS spending more than necessary (as witnessed by the teenage girl given surgery to increase her height by four inches so that she could apply to be an air stewardess; as her surgeons warned, she subsequently suffered stress fractures of both legs and may never walk again).
I was rather pleased to see that a hospital in the Health Secretary's constituency (also my own) is offering the individual vaccinations. |
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angel
Number one: You may not have suffered any ill effects, but one in a thousand children who caught measles with you died as a result. Fact
Number two: The speculation around the link centres on anecdotal evidence from a doctor who has not done enough research to come close to even suggesting a link, let alone proving it (Note: that doesn't mean that there is no lonk, but it is totally unproven). All the good science (based on very large amounts opf historical data, suggests no link at all (or at least not a statistically significant one by some margin)
Number three: Even if you believe the doctor in question, if you read his paper (and I have) the link he makes is between live measles virus (in the vaccine) being found in the gut of these children which may lead to a form of Bowel condition which may look like Chrone's disease and may be a cause of autism. So the link is NOT anything to do with it being a multiple injection, but purely with the m,easels element. In a subsequent 'study' by the good doctor, he has himselfg admitted that some of the children in which the residual virus was found, who had autism, had had the individual injections. So, IF you believe the link, then there is just as much chance of the child becoming autistic with the single vaccines as there is with the MMR.
Just so you know, I have a 2 year old son, and having a scientific background, I decided to read all original papers on this one before we decided what to do. I read nearly 10 papers all together. All the 'good' science (proper data analysis, rigourous methodology etc.) shows no link. All the papers claiming a link are 'bad' science, based on anecdotal evidence or selective sampling and speculationi. This is bad. There may be a link, but with all the evidence in front of me:
1. It is very rare (certainly much rarer than the incidence of bad reactions to the measles virus itself, which can kill).
2. If the people wanting to prove the link do some proper science to try and prove it, then all this speculation will be knocked on the head, and we'll know for sure one way or the other. Until then, the risks of having the jabv look much much less than those of not having it (especially given that in south east enlgand the take up is so low that there is no longer herd immunity, so the chances of gettign measles have gone up significantly.
Balancing all this, we gave our son the MMR jab. However, I can't say we did this without some trepidation, only that we had to make the choice on the available evidence. |
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Thank you, [goff]; you have addressed the first part of my comment. The remainder (which is, I admit, incidental to this thread) is another issue. |
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By the way zkk, I agree with you too - eating dirt is good. Detox is bad. That is not the same as having poor hygiene with rgard to food preparation though, especially where meat is concerned. However, if my son drops his cheerios (dry) on the kitchen floor (laminate) they go back in his bowl! |
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I had to get MMR as part of the immigration process. My arm hurt for a week. |
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