Committing Cultural Suicide by Science

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Recently, I saw a television ad for Lysol in which there was an implication that all germs are bad and killing 99% of them everywhere is required, especially with respect to school children.  This got me to thinking about my own childhood and the number of childhood diseases I suffered.  It also reminded me of a maxim that was prevalent at that time "You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die.".

Well, folks, if we continue applying antiseptics to everything and bubble wrap our children, the 1% we can't kill could well mutate into a pathogen that will wipe us out in large numbers.  If kids are protected everywhere, how will they ever develop any immunity to the general junk in the environment?

Did you ever wonder why so many people are now allergic to pulse?  That's peanuts, peas, and other related vegetables, by the way?  Could it be because they were not exposed to these foods when they were in a totipotent state during infancy?  Infants are totipotent and can develop antibodies and immune responses to anything, but if they are not exposed during their totipotency period (quite short), they will be allergic to unexpected things and some ordinary bacterial found everywhere such as streptococcus strains found in the soil may make them very sick or even kill them.  Generally, people develop immunities to these and other bacteria, but if they are never exposed in childhood, there is a good chance of a serious infection in adults.

Somebody needs to put the brakes on this kind of advertising as it is misleading the public.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

I recall hearing a quote from George Carlin, in which he claimed he swam in raw (explicit) as a child and therefore developed an "immune system of steel."  I agree with what Nonny said.  Feeble immune systems are easy targets for potentially lethal diseases.

[Sabretooth78 808]

^ Yes, he was "tempered in raw sewage" because as children he and his friends swam in the East River and none of them ever got polio.  He had a whole routine on exactly this topic.

I've wondered about this many times myself.  Peanut allergies for instance - I never heard about those growing up and yet you never heard about lots of people dying from some unknown illness which was eventually recognized to be peanut allergy.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you feed a totipotent infant peanut puree (baby food) there is every good chance it will develop the enzymes and antibodies to use peanuts in its diet.  If you don't, then ...

Peanut allergy is a phenomenon of the late 20th century. 

  Edited August 26, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  

[LexusInfernus 908]

^ Yes, he was "tempered in raw sh*t" because as children he and his friends swam in the East River and none of them ever got polio.  He had a whole routine on exactly this topic.

Uh no, he didn't get polio because he was lucky, not because he exposed himself to extreme unhygienic conditions. Although I doubt he actually did that. 

The simple fact is that we have managed to reduce diseases to an incredible extend exactly by becoming more hygienic. People who live in rather unhygienic circumstances are not healthier or less likely to be sick, in fact its very much the opposite. 

That said, yeah we have reached a point where our quest for better hygiene has reached a point of overkill. But no, we shouldn't let our personal hygiene standards drop to much. Washing your hands at appropriate times saves lives. 

[MushyMushy 3,617]

I actually read somewhere that one theory is that early excessive exposure to peanuts is what causes people to be allergic to them. Children in the States eat lots of packaged foods, and a whole lot of the packages for stuff mention that they're produced on equipment that may have come in contact with peanuts or other nuts. Plenty of packaged foods also have peanuts in them. Some scientists think that early and excessive exposure to them may cause the immune system to label them as a threat. This is complicated by the suspicion that roasting peanuts, as many American companies do, may alter the shape of the proteins in the nuts... and the proteins in them are already considered to trigger stronger than average reactions by the immune system than most other proteins. They think the roasting of them may be an issue because children in the US are more likely to be allergic to peanuts than children in other countries where they do other things to the nuts, such as boiling them.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Yeah, Japanese people think it's weird that Americans have so many peanut allergies, and I think it was Duke around these parts who said that a while back in another thread.  Anyways, peanut allergies are unheard of over in Japan.  Food allergies in general are pretty rare, and the Japanese can be as fastidious about cleaning and cleanliness as any of your big Lysol commercial inhabitants.

[Wiimeiser 444]

You also have to consider that it'd probably be easier to clone My Little Pony characters than to cure allergies. How about a ban on manufacturing peanut foods on equipment that manufactures non-peanut foods? Or a ban on processing peanuts in general? I'm allergic to dust mites, and it utterly destroys my ability to breathe at night. Yet not even giving me Leukemia and HIV will fix it since neither attacks the histamines (the former attacks the white blood cells and the latter disables antibodies)

[Easy Bakes 253]

BTW after that lysol kill 99% of the germs, they are most likely back again very quickly anyway. so not much point is using anything more then soap to clean.

 

 

 

[Duke87 1,070]

Yeah, Japanese people think it's weird that Americans have so many peanut allergies, and I think it was Duke around these parts who said that a while back in another thread.  Anyways, peanut allergies are unheard of over in Japan.  Food allergies in general are pretty rare, and the Japanese can be as fastidious about cleaning and cleanliness as any of your big Lysol commercial inhabitants.

*achoo*

Yes, I'm sure I've said that before. My source is a doctor with decades of experience practicing medicine otherwise known as my father. MushyMushy's explanation is the same as the one I got: roasting the peanuts transforms a protein in them into a form that triggers a reaction in people who are allergic. Boiling them (as is typical in Asia) does not get them hot enough for the transformation to occur.

With regards to allergies in general it is not fully understood why exactly they have become more common in the US, although we do know that the cause is environmental and not genetic.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I could follow my temptation to simply say the world has gone nuts and if we all washed ourselves in bath tubs filled with manure and entrails we'd be the better for it but I know there is more complexity to it than that.

I have not researched the history if allergies so am uncertain if it is truly a modern hypersanitized environmental phenomenon.

I grew up in Adelaide in the early nineties so suburban working class modern. I had allergies as a young child but grew out of them. I was allergic to dairy and wheat snd sugar but these days down several Monsters a night with my cheese and ham sandwiches.

I these days have no allergies. I can eat anything. I spent time in the bush growing up and would see if plants were edible by trying them and would eat insects and lizards uncooked just cos I could.

While I grew up in suburbia and thus also had regular baths and soap and running water I also spent a majority of my time outdoors until I had to look for a job.

Thus my childhood and teenage years were both suburban but also working class and I think I lost my allergies through things like eating out of rubbish bins at school and drinking from bottles littered by the road etc.

I think handwashing and all that is good but these newfangled antibacterial washes... Reckon I'll stick to soap.

[Larks2242 251]

Politics are partly to blame, banning everything in sight takes away the learning curve, You learn not to play with matches after you burn yourselves enough times, reading a book on playing with matches will not net you the same life experence as feeling the burn itself.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Truth is that parenting is a skill that can only be imparted by other parents and relying on the literature is very risky.  No one can really say what the credentials of the authors are.  We get the same BS from the newly graduated dietitians who want everyone to follow some food guide or other simply because they have no dietary experience of their own.  I've yet to meet a practising dietician over the age of about 35.  I think that most of them give it up when they discover it is a mug's game.

[madhatter106 3,903]

Yeah, Japanese people think it's weird that Americans have so many peanut allergies, and I think it was Duke around these parts who said that a while back in another thread.  Anyways, peanut allergies are unheard of over in Japan.  Food allergies in general are pretty rare, and the Japanese can be as fastidious about cleaning and cleanliness as any of your big Lysol commercial inhabitants.

I wonder what the statistics are for celiac disease in Japan.  There's a lot of gluten chatter in the states the past few years, with lots of people suddenly sensitive to gluten.  Or at least sensitive to the idea of gluten...

[LexusInfernus 908]

Yeah, Japanese people think it's weird that Americans have so many peanut allergies, and I think it was Duke around these parts who said that a while back in another thread.  Anyways, peanut allergies are unheard of over in Japan.  Food allergies in general are pretty rare, and the Japanese can be as fastidious about cleaning and cleanliness as any of your big Lysol commercial inhabitants.

I wonder what the statistics are for celiac disease in Japan.  There's a lot of gluten chatter in the states the past few years, with lots of people suddenly sensitive to gluten.  Or at least sensitive to the idea of gluten...

Well yeah, its mostly the idea they are sensitive too. I think I read somewhere that up to 70% of the people who claim to be allergic to gluten are not actually allergic to gluten. They just say it because they don't want to eat gluten and they don't want to eat gluten because some idiot told them that gluten are super unhealthy for you. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Gluten is a major component of wheat products.  Cultures that don't use much, if any, wheat don't get this problem because they don't get exposed.  Rice is gluten free as I know because I had a dog who was gluten sensitive.  When we switched him off the wheat-based dog food to a rice based one, he quit having diarrhoea, and gained 10 pounds.  This move probably saved his life, as he was only six months old at the time.

Turns out that if an Irish Setter puppy is fed wheat gluten in early life (before 8 weeks), there is a very good chance (genetic) that he will develop an enzyme lock against the gluten and be unable to process it for the rest of his life.  I suspect a lot of food allergies in humans operate the same way, either as a sensitizer or a desensitizer.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Yeah, while all that was going on here, there was no gluten scare in Japan that I noticed.  My wife agrees, there wasn't anything being promoted as "GLUTEN FREE!" or anything like that.  They have other things to worry about there, like pieces of plastic or bone being found in McDonald's McNuggets, or poisoned frozen food from China.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Meh, the gluten thing is just a dumb fad promoted by a bunch of celebrities and health guru's that have absolutely no idea what they are talking about or how food works. In time this fad will pass when someone in Hollywood mentions that they ended up looking so good because they are on a steak diet or something (while failing to mention the strict exercise regimen, the fact that they don't eat more than 1500 calories a day and have done extensive plastic surgery). Then some idiot will talk about how steak is full of superproteins and everyone will insist on eating only steak. 

I mean, every few years its something else. 

[Seraf 1,238]

As a celiac, I'm quite annoyed by people who don't eat gluten just because they want to be trendy. And most of the time they don't even know what gluten is :/ Thanks to them people don't take our sickness seriously :/

[Belfastsocrates 1,753]

Meh, the gluten thing is just a dumb fad promoted by a bunch of celebrities and health guru's that have absolutely no idea what they are talking about or how food works.

For some it's a fad, for those that have coeliac/celiac disease then it's certainly not a fad. 

[LexusInfernus 908]

Well yeah, of course there are people who really can't eat gluten. I did not want to come off as insensitive to those who suffer from celiac disease. But they are expected to be about 1% of the population. That does mean that statistically, most people who claim they can't eat gluten are liars or at least severely misinformed. 

Although I do have to say, if you don't want to eat gluten because you think its just healthier, why can't you say so? Why pretend you have an actual illness when youre not sick? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

In my circle of friends and acquaintances over the years (quite a large group), I know of one person who truly has celiac disease.  The treatment at that time was to consume cortisone in massive doses.  I've often wondered if the cure was worse than the disease.

[Sabretooth78 808]

More often than not I'm afraid it is becoming that way.

 

EDIT: please remember that this is a PG-13 site.  Thank you!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I guess we can add this one to the causes outlined in the Malthusian Theory.  Population control by stupidity.

[MintberryCrunch 83]

I've always wondered about the allergy thing and auto-immune diseases. Sure, we don't have polio and smallpox and the plague anymore, but now we have diseases where the body attacks itself in greater number. Is that related to all the chemicals and everything we've been using? It's just something I think about.  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, the pathogens that caused early childhood diseases are still around.  If you are not inoculated against polio, I'd stay off beaches in the summer.

We are living longer thanks to medical science, so many of the 'new' diseases are really associated with ageing.  However, some of the new ones, such as the pulse (peanut) allergies are probably due to overuse of antiseptics and bubble wrapping our kids.  They don't get a chance to develop antibodies when they have more ability to generate them.  Babies are totipotent, and it is very hard to infect a baby with anything because they generate the counter immediately.

Other stuff?  Probably from pollution.  An organism cannot survive in an environment of its own waste.  Ask any bread yeast.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Also I think a lot of these new diseases aren't new or the result of aging itself. Rather, they were around, but because people lived shorter lives they simply never had the chance to manifest. No point in getting an illness that manifests after your 30 when a good chunk of the population doesn't even make it to 30. 

Another aspect is simply better tools to diagnose and study disease. A lot of illnesses have symptoms that are common across a number of illnesses. Its only the very specific pattern and combination of symptoms that tells you what kind of illness you really have. But thats today, how much of that did we know 50-100 years ago? Could we differentiate between two illnesses that had similar symptoms but differ on one crucial point? Did we have labs with high powered microscopes that allowed us to accurately study the bacteria or virus? The better we are able to study illnesses, the more we are able to find differences and notice that similar symptoms might be caused by a whole range of illnesses, rather than being just part of one big illness. 

[Fantozzi 4,067]

I personally think there is a big difference between science and the belief in science. Most things we believe till they are proved wrong. Then we drop them.

We accept, what seems obvious, logical, consistent. What does the word 'accept' means in this sentence?

So the big deal is, to make things obvious. If you make it obvious, that apples are good, people will believe that apples are good. But making things obvious isn't science. Otherwise every tin foil hat would be science. Filmmakers would be scientists. What I'm doing quite now, writing a post, I try to make my thoughts obvious. It isn't science.

How much did I believe in Popeye – when you eat spinach you'll get strong, because there's so much iron in it. IRON! The right thing for a boy that wants to have muscles of steel! I even said to my mother: "please cook more spinach".

This way I believed in something logical: spinach -> iron -> hard body. This way science would be always be limited to the view of a little boy. But isn't all the science done for extending the limits of knowledge? To overcome this limitation: what I know is true? Isn't science to prove exactly this: to prove what is held for truth? If science backpedals – what I found is the truth, no need for you to search further – it becomes religion.

Most of the time we pick up stories, pictures, what we are tought etc. for science. We say: sounds good, sounds convincing. It has a method. This isn't science. That's what common sense is making out of science. It's the meaning of science – the cultural output, the part of science we get a consensus about, we trust and believe in. Other scientific findings we ignore: I'll never believe that!

Science isn't to convince people, to make circumstances obvious. Science is when you find out: what I believed to be obvious it could be explained even in another way. Science is mistrust. The idear of measuring things: I don't trust in my perception – I want to find a way to prove it.

What most people do instead: they trust in what they see and hear. So arily satisfied with the knowledge they have. That has nothing to do with the insatiable hunger of science. Science isn't the happiness of the enlightened. It is the restlessness of the seeker.

My knowledge? What a disappointment! They told me: sorry, just a stupid error. No muscles of steel. Only a green tongue.

  Edited September 14, 2015 by fantozzi  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The problem is telling good science from bad "science".  People sometimes go off the rails with some theory that they proclaim as fact without enough evidence.  This is easy to do in human biology because there is a really long verification period, often generations.  Yet the fourth estate will publish anything sensational even if it is not proven.

A theory can only become law if it predicts results that can be verified by independent investigators.  If some conjecture includes the word 'seem' it needs to be verified very carefully and the uncertainties removed before it can be generally accepted as factual.  Conjectures in biology often take generations to verify or toss out.

[Fantozzi 4,067]

The problem is telling good science from bad "science".  People sometimes go off the rails with some theory that they proclaim as fact without enough evidence.  This is easy to do in human biology because there is a really long verification period, often generations.  Yet the fourth estate will publish anything sensational even if it is not proven.

A theory can only become law if it predicts results that can be verified by independent investigators.  If some conjecture includes the word 'seem' it needs to be verified very carefully and the uncertainties removed before it can be generally accepted as factual.  Conjectures in biology often take generations to verify or toss out.

I'm not shure if it's good sience - bad science or how we handle information. As I think science should be beyond good or bad.

But your post made me remember a documentary from a german journalist who faked together with a lokal doctor a chocolate diet togehther with a scientific study. There was a good insight how they work if they want to have the 'right' outcome.

Unfortunately I found the documentary only in german. But as media around the world were fooled by this hoax of a 'chocolate diet' you can find at least some glimpse on the story in english. (worth reading)

What you say, *results that can be verified by independent investigators' - you're absolutely right. But I think this isn't only the job of science. As if journalists had proofed only a little bit - from where comes those informations etc, (the very basic things of their job) - they could have recognized there's someone fooling them. So ithink this is also a question how we handle information. Society - we - shouldn't trust everything that is labeled 'scientific'.

  Edited September 15, 2015 by fantozzi