Quotulatiousness

March 10, 2012

Some diseases may be caused by “endogenous” retrovirii

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:17

Matt Ridley on some recent discoveries in genetics and medicine that may help to explain certain diseases like multiple sclerosis:

The virus implicated in multiple sclerosis is called HERV-Fc1, a bizarre beast called an “endogenous” retrovirus. What this means is that its genes are part of the human genome. For millions of years, they have been integrated into our own DNA and passed on by normal heredity. It was one of the shocks of genomic science to find that the human genome contains more retroviral than “human” genes: some 5% to 8% of the entire genome.

Normally, the genes of endogenous retroviruses remain dormant, but — a bit like a computer virus that springs into action on a trigger — something wakes them up sometimes, and actual viruses are made from them, which then infect other cells in the body. The Danish scientists suggest that this is what happens in multiple sclerosis. Bjørn Nexø of Aarhus University writes that “retroviral infections often develop into running battles between the immune system and virus, with the virus mutating repeatedly to avoid the immune system, and the immune system repeatedly catching up. One can see the episodic nature of multiple sclerosis as such a running battle.”

The possibility that you can inherit the genes of a virus blurs the distinction between a genetic and an infectious disease. The HERV-Fc1 genes lie on the X chromosome. Since women have twice as many X chromosomes as men, this might explain why some forms of MS are more common in women. Dr. Nexø concludes hopefully: “The finding that a disease is caused by an infectious agent is an encouraging one. These are the diseases which we know best how to treat.

The research also appears to show a link between cat ownership and schizophrenia:

Human beings can also catch toxoplasma from cats, and it’s known to affect behavior: altering personalities, slowing reaction times and increasing the risk of car accidents. More than 20 studies have now found an association between schizophrenia and toxoplasma. Schizophrenia is more common among those who had pet cats in their childhood homes (but not in those who had pet dogs).

Indeed, some scientists think that schizophrenia only became common, around 1870, when keeping cats as indoor pets became fashionable. The parasite has genes for dopamine, a neurochemical found in excess in schizophrenics.

March 9, 2012

Number-crunching on the subject of pornography

Filed under: Health, Liberty, Media, Science — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:19

Garth Zietsman does the statistics on pornography. First the objections of various groups:

The sociological objection is that pornography decreased respect for long-term, monogamous relationships, and attenuates a desire for procreation. Pornography can “potentially undermine the traditional values that favor marriage, family, and children”, and that it depicts sexuality in a way which is not connected to “emotional attachment, of kindness, of caring, and especially not of continuance of the relationship, as such continuance would translate into responsibilities”

The religious/conservative objection is similar to the sociological objection. They argue that this industry undermines the family and leads to the moral breakdown of society. They say that it is amoral, weakens family values, and is contrary to the religion’s teachings and human dignity.

Some feminists argue that it is an industry which exploits women and which is complicit in violence against women, both in its production (where they charge that abuse and exploitation of women performing in pornography is rampant) and in its consumption (where they charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment). They charge that pornography contributes to the male-centered objectification of women and thus to sexism.

Other objections are that the sex industry is sometimes connected to criminal activities, such as human trafficking, illegal immigration, drug abuse, and exploitation of children (child pornography, child prostitution). However these effects are related not so much to pornography as to prostitution.

Then a small sampling of the findings (it’s a long post):

Firstly (using the General Social Survey) I found no relationship between being pro the legality of porn, or propensity to watch porn, and pro social behaviors e.g. volunteer work, blood donation, etc.

We can dismiss the feminist (and sociological) charges of porn increasing sexual violence and leading to sexism. The USA, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands (2) and Japan were just some of the countries that suddenly went from no legal pornography to quite widespread availability and consumption of it. These studies all found that greater availability of, and exposure to, pornography does not increase the rate of sexual assaults on women, and probably decreases it (3). Japanese porn is quite frequently violent and yet even there rape decreased from an already very low base. It’s interesting that an increase in porn exposure decreases sexual violence only, and has no effect on other crime. Economists would put this down to a substitution effect.

Several countries have sex offender registers — mainly of pedophiles. A wide variety of professions are represented on these registers. Members of professions that supposedly promote morality e.g. clerics or teachers, are quite common on it yet conspicuously absent from such registers are men who have worked in the porn industry.

This study (1) found no relationship between the frequency of x-rated film viewing and attitudes toward women or feminism. From the GSS (controlling for IQ, education, income, age, race and ideology) I found that those who are pro the legality of porn are less likely to support traditional female roles, more likely to be against preferential treatment of either gender, and to find woman’s rights issues more frequently salient. Although I found that women’s rights issues are less salient to male watchers, and female watchers are less likely to think women should work, I also found that watching porn is unrelated to negative attitudes toward women and feminism.

In short exposure to and tolerance of pornography does not cause anti-social behavior (and may even reduce it in relation to sex) and does not get in the way of pro social behavior either.

H/T to Tyler Cowen for the link.

February 28, 2012

Yet another death due to excessive concern for ‘elf an’ safety issues

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:25

Bagehot blogs about the unhealthy results of paying too close attention to the health and safety regulations:

[T]he Mail on Sunday ran an interesting feature this weekend about a different example of what certainly sounded like a health and safety overreaction. It told the tale of a man who drowned in a shallow boating pond in his local park, after suffering an epileptic seizure while feeding swans. A passer-by (a woman who was in charge of a small child so did not dare enter the pond) called the emergency services. But the first firemen to show up announced that they only had Level One training, for ankle-deep water, and needed to wait for a specialist team with Level Two training for chest-deep water. By the time that team arrived, the man had been floating in the pond for 37 minutes. While waiting for that specialist help, the same firemen also strongly urged a policeman not to attempt a rescue in the pond, even refusing to lend the policeman a life-vest. Then the policeman’s control room told him not to enter the water, as the victim had been in the pond so long that it was a body retrieval mission, not a rescue.

The MoS, which sent its reporter out into the same pond equipped with no more than rubber waders, called it a story that “shames Britain”. Certainly its photograph of the eventual retrieval of the poor victim’s body, featuring 25 separate emergency workers, an inflatable tent, several fire engines and a helicopter, is suggestive of an over-reaction after an under-reaction.

It is tempting to conclude that Britain has fallen into a serious problem with regulation, red tape and crippling risk-aversion. Certainly, the newspapers have recently been filled with all manner of depressing stories about pancake races being cancelled, policemen being urged not to pursue criminals onto roof tops, party bunting being outlawed or council workers refusing to mount shoulder-height step ladders to fix broken signs without logistical back-up once reserved for the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

[. . .]

All of which is sensible. You don’t have to be a wild-eyed libertarian to suspect that something has gone wrong with the management of risk in Britain. It is also depressing to see so many advertisements for ambulance-chasing lawyers, urging anyone who has had the smallest accident to sue. Anecdotally, members of parliament grumble about the role played by some insurance companies who hold special advice-sessions on liability for local councils, seeking to terrify them into taking out expensive cover and in the process filling the heads of municipal bosses with all manner of scare stories.

But listening to my rather cautious Jersey host, and reading the MoS report of the pond rescue, I found myself wondering if the British character may not also play a role. Read the report by Lord Young, or even the detail of the admirably comprehensive Mail report, and the rules themselves are sometimes less the problem than their interpretation. It turns out that emergency workers can break all sorts of health and safety rules when lives are at stake, without fear of prosecution, for example. And those guidelines on Level One and Level Two water training were intended for rescuers in fast-moving flood waters, the inquest into the pond case was told.

February 21, 2012

The real problem with forcing employers’ insurance to pay for contraception

Filed under: Government, Health, Liberty, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:29

At the Adam Smith Institute blog, Tom Clougherty discusses the biggest problem with the current American debate over contraceptives and insurance coverage:

Now, I’m no Rick Santorum. I’m a fan of contraception. But there’s so much wrong with this story that it’s hard to know where to start. Should the government really compel you to buy a service from a private company? It’s probably better than the government nicking your money and providing that service themselves, but for a libertarian it still rankles. Then there’s the insensitivity to deeply-held religious conviction, which not only exposes the ‘liberal’ left’s inability to tolerate social mores that differ from their own, but also highlights the way big government inevitably tramples on diversity and choice with its one-size-fits-all monomania. And then there’s the idiot-economics which suggests that you can force a company to provide a service without anyone having to pay for it. In this case, assuming insurance companies can’t find a way of covertly passing on the cost of contraceptive cover to church-affiliated employers, then everyone else with insurance ends up footing the bills through higher premiums.

But perhaps the biggest problem is the one explained by Sheldon Richman in this Freeman article: contraception has nothing whatsoever to do with insurance.

    Insurance arose as a way for individuals to pool their risk of some low-probability/high-cost misfortune befalling them. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but coming of child-bearing age and choosing to use contraception is not an insurable event. It’s a volitional act. It may have good consequences for the person taking the action and society at large, but it is still a volitional act. It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will use contraception.

February 18, 2012

The North Carolina school lunch story continues

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:17

Remember the original story from a few days ago that lots of conservative and libertarian bloggers jumped on right away: the child whose packed lunch was deemed unhealthy so she had to eat cafeteria chicken nuggets and the bill sent home to the parents? That story was denied and several sources insisted it was a deliberate reframing of an innocent situation. However, there’s now a second parent form that school who says the same thing happened to her child:

Diane Zambrano says her 4-year-old daughter, Jazlyn, is in the same West Hoke Elementary School class as the little girl whose lunch gained national attention earlier this week. When Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day did not meet the necessary guidelines and that Jazlyn had been sent to the cafeteria.

The lunch Zambrano packed for her daughter? A cheese and salami sandwich on a wheat bun with apple juice. The lunch she got in the cafeteria? Chicken nuggets, a sweet potato, bread and milk.

[. . .]

When Jazlyn said she didn’t eat what her mother had made her, Zambrano went to her teacher and demanded to know what happened. She said the teacher told her an official had come through that day to inspect students’ lunches and that those who were lacking certain food groups were sent to the cafeteria. After she received her cafeteria food, the teacher told Zambrano, Jazlyn was told to put her homemade lunch back in her lunchbox and set it on the floor.

Zambrano said the teacher told her it was not the first time student lunches have been inspected, and that officials come “every so often.”

[. . .]

The memo Jazlyn brought from the school outlines the necessary nutritional requirements students’ homemade lunches must contain: two servings of fruit or vegetables, one serving of dairy, one serving of grain and one serving of meat or meat substitute. Included with the memo was a separate sheet, this one a bill for the cafeteria food Jazlyn was served.

The memo, dated Jan. 27 with the subject line “RE: Healthy Lunches,” was signed by school principal Jackie Samuels and said, while “we welcome students to bring lunches from home … it must be a nutritious, balanced meal with the above requirements. Students, who do not bring a healthy lunch, will be offered the missing portions which may result in a fee from the cafeteria.”

February 13, 2012

Greek government expands categories of disabled to include “compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Greece, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:04

At a time most people expect the Greek government to be cutting back, the Labor ministry just expanded the recognized disabilities to include a few categories that will raise eyebrows:

Disability groups in Greece expressed anger on Monday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.

The National Confederation of Disabled People, calling the action “incomprehensible,” said that pedophiles could be eligible for a higher disability pay than some people who had received organ transplants.

The Labor Ministry said the categories added to the expanded list — that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists — were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

February 8, 2012

Help combat RRSHS (Relative Risk Scary Headline Syndrome)

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:38

Timandra Harkness on the latest “scare the shit out of people with blatant propaganda” campaign in Britain:

To put that another way, the campaign is suggesting that if 48,000 women all drank two large glasses of wine every night (it doesn’t specify for how long — a year, 20 years — this is a health campaign after all, so why would we need to see proper research citations?), then out of those assiduous drinkers an extra two would die in a year because they drank more than the government guidelines suggest.

It’s a classic case of RRSHS — Relative Risk Scary Headline Syndrome. Why bore people with a sober assessment of how likely something is to kill them when you can scream a terrifying figure at them instead? So what if they’re far more likely to die of something else?

And in fact, moderate drinking offers significant protection against heart disease, which kills one in three of us. ‘Apparently, two large glasses of wine, or more, a day could make me half as likely to die from a heart attack’, the plasticine figure could truthfully have said.

RRSHS is a variant of the “science by press release” variant of junk science.

Update: Tim Worstall loses his cool over the statistical lies being bandied around in this particular Nanny campaign:

    Prime Minister David Cameron is known to have sympathy with the idea of minimum pricing, which medics say could save nearly 10,000 lives per year if set at 50p per unit.

Gosh, that’s amazing.

    Alcohol related deaths in the UK rose to 9,031 in 2008, up from 8,724 the previous year.

Rilly? A slight rise in the cost of cheap booze will save more lives per year than are lost to all booze?

Hey, why not put it up to £50 a unit and we’ll all live forever?

Forgive me the crudity but I’ve really had it with cunts lying to get their bandwagons rolling.

And in the comments, “PJH” says:

One wonders, of course, if these figures are created in the same way as alcohol related admissions to hospitals.

“30% of this death was due to alcohol, 10% of that teetotaller’s death was due to alcohol, 14.243245% of that other death…”

European energy policy based on renewables falters in face of severe winter weather

Filed under: Environment, Europe, Health, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Kevin Myers on the folly of abandoning nuclear power generation in favour of renewables:

Russia’s main gas-company, Gazprom, was unable to meet demand last weekend as blizzards swept across Europe, and over three hundred people died. Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?

Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure, and the EU would have suffered an economic body blow to match that of Japan’s tsunami a year ago. No electricity means no water, no trams, no trains, no airports, no traffic lights, no phone systems, no sewerage, no factories, no service stations, no office lifts, no central heating and even no hospitals, once their generators run out of fuel.

Modern cities are incredibly fragile organisms, which tremble on the edge of disaster the entire time. During a severe blizzard, it is electricity alone that prevents a midwinter urban holocaust. We saw what adverse weather can do, when 15,000 people died in the heatwave that hit France in August 2003. But those deaths were spread over a month. Last weekend’s weather, without energy, could have caused many tens of thousands of deaths over a couple of days.

[. . .]

Frau Merkel has announced that Germany is going to phase out nuclear power, simply because of the Japanese tsunami. Well, that is like basing water-collection policies in Rhineland-Westphalia on the monsoon cycle of Borneo. As I was saying last week, the Germans have a powerfully emotional attachment to everything that is “green”, and an energy policy based on renewables will usually win German hearts. But it will not protect the owners of those hearts from frostbite and death due to exposure, for wind can often be not so much a Renewable as an Unusable, and also an Unpredictable, an Unstorable, and — normally when it’s very cold — an Unmovable.

The seriousness of this is hard to exaggerate. The temperature in the Baltic countries last weekend was -33 degrees Celsius. The Eurasian landmass from Calais to Naples to Siberia was an icefield in which hundreds of millions of people were trapped. Without coal, oil and nuclear energy, mass deaths of the old and the young would have occurred on the first night. Three nights on of such conditions, and even the physically fit would have been dying of exposure, as the temperature inside dwellings fell and began to match that of the outside, an inverse image of what happened during the French heatwave 10 years ago, when there was no escape from the heat.

January 29, 2012

Coffee may help in weight loss (but your gallon-sized hippy-dippy frappy latté certainly won’t)

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:30

A brief news item at 680news.com:

New research has found coffee may have many health benefits, including moderate weight loss.

James O’Keefe, a cardiologist with St. Lukes medical system, says a review of some of the largest studies on coffee consumption found it contains anti-oxidants which are widely believed to be good for your health.

He added that, despite the fact that coffee has been shown to increase blood pressure and heart rate, the caffeine can actually aid in the prevention or delay of Type 2 diabetes.

Compounds in your morning cup of joe can increase insulin and reduce inflammation, as well we increasing your metabolism at the cost of no calories.

Just for the folks who think coffee is something you pay $5.00 plus tax for at your local Starbucks: this is the no-cream, no-sugar, no-syrup, no-whipped-cream, no-sprinkles hot beverage you don’t need to buy in imaginatively named cup sizes.

Thanks for the memories, oligomers

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:21

A recent discovery at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research may indicate fruitful directions for further research on memory loss:

Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called “synapses.” But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory.

The finding supports a surprising new theory about memory, and may have a profound impact on explaining other oligomer-linked functions and diseases in the brain, including Alzheimer’s disease and prion diseases.

“Self-sustaining populations of oligomers located at synapses may be the key to the long-term synaptic changes that underlie memory; in fact, our finding hints that oligomers play a wider role in the brain than has been thought,” says Kausik Si, Ph.D., an associate investigator at the Stowers Institute, and senior author of the new study, which is published in the January 27, 2012 online issue of the journal Cell.

January 26, 2012

The Crazy Years: today’s exhibit – the junction between bad parenting and bad nutrition

Filed under: Britain, Food, Health, Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:21

May we present Stacey Irvine, 17, the new poster girl for neglectful parenting and test case for even more Nanny State intervention:

A teenage girl who has eaten almost nothing else apart from chicken nuggets for 15 years has been warned by doctors that the junk food is killing her.

Stacey Irvine, 17, has been hooked on the treats since her mother bought her some at a McDonald’s restaurant when she was two.

[. . .]

Miss Irvine, who has never eaten fruit or vegetables, had swollen veins in her tongue and was found to have anaemia.

[. . .]

Her exasperated mother Evonne Irvine, 39, who is battling to get her daughter seen by a specialist, told the newspaper: ‘It breaks my heart to see her eating those damned nuggets.

‘She’s been told in no uncertain terms that she’ll die if she carries on like this. But she says she can’t eat anything else.’

She once tried starving her daughter in a bid to get her to eat more nutritious food – but did not have any success.

Miss Irvine, whose only other variation in her diet is the occasional slice of toast for breakfast and crisps, said that once she tried nuggets she ‘loved them so much they were all I would eat’.

Of course, this is reported in the Daily Mail, so the story’s relationship with reality may be a bit looser than one might hope.

January 23, 2012

Richard Branson: End the war on drugs

Filed under: Britain, Health, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

In advance of appearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee’s inquiry into drug policy, Richard Branson expresses his anti-prohibition views in the Telegraph:

Just as prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States in the 1920s, the war on drugs has failed globally. Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted, and thriving crime syndicates. It is time for a new approach.

Too many of our leaders worldwide are ignoring policy reforms that could rapidly reduce violence and organised crime, cut down on theft, improve public health and reduce the use of illicit drugs. They are failing to act because the reforms that are needed centre on decriminalising drug use and treating it as a health problem. They are scared to take a stand that might seem “soft”.

But exploring ways to decriminalise drugs is anything but soft. It would free up crime-fighting resources to go after violent organised crime, and get more people the help they need to get off drugs. It’s time to get tough on misguided policies and end the war on drugs.

[. . .]

Drugs are dangerous and ruin lives. They need to be regulated. But we should work to reduce the crime, health and social problems associated with drug markets in whatever way is most effective. Broad criminalisation should end; new policy options should be explored and evaluated; drug users in need should get treatment; young people should be dissuaded from drug use via education; and violent criminals should be the target of law enforcement. We should stop ineffective initiatives like arresting and punishing citizens who have addiction problems.

The next step is simple: countries should be encouraged to experiment with new policies. We have models to follow. In Switzerland, the authorities employed a host of harm-reduction therapies, and successfully disrupted the criminal drug market. In Portugal, decriminalisation for users of all drugs 10 years ago led to a significant reduction in heroin use and decreased levels of property crime, HIV infection and violence. Replacing incarceration with therapy also helped create safer communities and saved the country money — since prison is far more expensive than treatment. Following examples such as these and embracing a regulated drugs market that is tightly controlled and complemented by treatment — not incarceration — for those with drug problems will cost taxpayers a lot less.

January 18, 2012

First they came for the smokers, then the drinkers, and now the meat-eaters

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:52

Rob Lyons on the flimsy case for declaring that “eating meat causes cancer”, and the rising tide of buttinsky government and their nudge, hector, prod, and persecute urges:

Meat causes cancer. It’s been said so many times that you’d have to be an idiot not to believe it, right?

The latest confirmation of this apparent common sense was a report published last week in the British Journal of Cancer Research. The authors, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, brought together 11 studies — published between 1993 and 2011 — that assessed the risk of pancreatic cancer from eating red meat and ‘processed’ meat. From this meta-analysis, the authors found that red meat increased the risk of pancreatic cancer for men, but not for women, and that the risk of pancreatic cancer rose by 19 per cent for every 50 grams of processed meat consumed.

The simple claim that ‘processed meat causes cancer’ was widely reported after the study was published. However, it would be wrong to assume that such claims about risk are all they are cracked up to be.

[. . .]

There are so many ways in which the crude tools of epidemiology could screw up the result of studies like this that it is normal for fairly small risks — like the 19 per cent increase in this case — to be treated with a massive pinch of salt. The authors of this study even note: ‘All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders such as body mass index and history of diabetes.’

[. . .]

So, to sum up: the association between processed meat and pancreatic cancer is so weak it might well be a mirage; the increased risk might not be caused by the processed meat itself; and even if it is, the risk is so low that it’s really not worth bothering about. Yet still we are advised to consider cutting down on our red meat and processed meat consumption. Life is, frankly, too short to miss out on such tasty foods on the slim chance that we might lose a few years of life in old age.

[. . .]

Now that the precedent has been set for the government to lambast those who engage in unapproved habits, it’s open season on any habit that a campaigner or columnist disapproves of. Ban it! Tax it! Make them get a prescription for it! Deny them medical care! Ellen’s article is objectionable but it only follows the remorseless logic of so many others.

There is another lesson from the meat-and-cancer story: at a time when all sorts of dubious claims are made based on junk science and dodgy statistics, only some panics get wide publicity; others just pop up and disappear again in a matter of hours. The difference is that some play to an existing political or media agenda and some do not. The idea that meat causes cancer appeals to health busybodies, politicians scrabbling around for a sense of purpose, vegetarians who can’t win a moral argument about animal rights, and environmentalists who have failed to convince us that increasing the ‘human footprint’ — by wanting to eat more meat, for example — is killing the planet.

January 17, 2012

To help kids stay healthier, don’t be a clean fanatic

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

I’ve suspected for quite a while that the “epidemic” of food allergies and other ailments among today’s children was related to the extremely hygienic conditions of modern homes (that is, kids’ immune systems were insufficiently stressed by exposure to germs, which meant higher risk of immune system over-reaction later in life). I’m not a scientist, so my suspicion was just based on less-than-statistically valid observation of my son and his friends while they were growing up — the kids with the most sterile home environments did seem more likely to have serious allergy issues come up later.

I could have been on the right track, after all:

I do wonder, however, whether we’re all becoming a bit too paranoid about germs. I include my own family in this group. Once we left the doctors’ office, for example, my wife and I encouraged our children to use a hand sanitizer. When our kids were toddlers our house had alcohol wipes and Purell vials all over the place. But is all this washing and disinfecting really necessary? Is it proactive prevention? Or overly paranoid fear?

That, at least, is the thinking behind the “hygiene hypothesis,” a school of thought first proposed by David P. Strachan in 1989, and now experiencing a resurgence that’s probably a response to society’s mania for cleanliness. Strachan’s original study sought to explain why British kids with greater numbers of older siblings had fewer incidences of hay fever, speculating that perhaps it could be the fact kids with lots of older siblings tend to be exposed to greater numbers of germs. While it was greeted with skepticism early on, Strachan’s theory has since been confirmed. In fact, in the decades since, greater exposure to germs early in life has also been associated in epidemiological studies with lower levels of asthma, some allergies and even such autoimmune diseases as type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

[. . .]

“These data support the idea that the greater diversity of microbial exposure among children who live on farms is associated with the protection from the development of asthma,” study researchers reported, speculating that microbial exposure may encourage development of immune system cells that in turn suppress the production of the sort of immune-system cells that trigger asthmatic reactions. Researchers’ next hope to determine which microbes are most responsible for preventing asthma — and that, perhaps, may lead to new therapies, such as targeted microbe exposures, for the dreaded respiratory malady.

More broadly, the study is a reminder that humans have been living and fighting off germs for tens of thousands of years. Particularly when we’re young, germs serve an important purpose for the development of the immune system. By depriving our children of exposure to germs, we may be depriving them the benefits of a process the human body has evolved over aeons, a process that helps to create healthy and allergy-free adults.

January 16, 2012

It may be pseudoscientific gibberish, but it makes a good newspaper headline

Filed under: Health, Media, Randomness — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

It’s pretty much a certainty that your local newspaper and radio stations have been busy pushing the meme that today is “Blue Monday“. It’s actually a bit of advertising creativity that’s metastasized:

January is a depressing time for many. The weather’s awful, you get less daylight than a stunted dandelion and your body is struggling to cope with the withdrawal of the depression-alleviating calorific foods, such as chocolate, of the hedonistic festive period. January is one long post-Christmas hangover.

So there are many reasons why someone may feel particularly “down” during January. But every year, much of the media become fixated on a specific day — the third Monday in January — as the most depressing of the year. It has become known as Blue Monday.

This silly claim comes from a ludicrous equation that calculates “debt”, “motivation”, “weather”, “need to take action” and other arbitrary variables that are impossible to quantify and largely incompatible.

True clinical depression (as opposed to a post-Christmas slump) is a far more complex condition that is affected by many factors, chronic and temporary, internal and external. What is extremely unlikely (i.e. impossible) is that there is a reliable set of external factors that cause depression in an entire population at the same time every year.

But that doesn’t stop the equation from popping up every year. Its creator, Dr Cliff Arnall, devised it for a travel firm. He has since admitted that it is meaningless (without actually saying it’s wrong).

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