This is gross

My friend Jon sent me this link to the (perhaps a tall and certainly incredibly gross) tale of a man who cured his serious adult-onset asthma by contracting Hookworm in Cameroon. He did this mainly by walking barefoot through public latreens.

His theory goes that in the western world asthma and other auto-immune system diseases (such as Crohn's -- thus my interest in this article) are becoming increasingly prevelant because we are increasingly avoiding the dirty world. Our immune systems, built up over tens of thousands of years to deal with the worst nature can throw at us, are now bored and so take to picking on healthy tissue rather than just going on vacation.

Hookworms, in order to avoid being destroyed by the body, produce a compound that suppresses the immune system's response (by sending it a free all-expense paid ticket to the destination of its choice, perhaps?). And lo, the symptoms of the auto-immune disease go away... Hookworm's die off and do not breed in the body so the benefits of this treatment are dependent on a continuing vector for hookworm infection.

While I salute this man's gung-ho attitude, and I appreciate the desperation that led him to this course of action, I must say that I most certainly do not want this hookworm treatment. It's really just gross.

There's a couple articles on the BBC: here's a pretty old one, and here's one that's even older. (The BBC sure loves it's close-up pictures of hookworm.) And here's a pretty recent reference in The Observer. Note how none of these articles understands (or even discusses) the mechanism hookworm uses to suppress the immune system. As they say in Legend of Zelda, It's a mystery to everyone.

GateGate-Gate

You may have heard: the head of the CIA, Porter Goss, is stepping down after a notably brief career. A related story hasn't been getting as much ink, but plenty of bytes & pixels are being filled in the blogosphere.

It's Hookergate. Oh... wait... no. I mean, "Hookergate".

Clearly it's a scandal, because the bloggers have chosen to add the suffix "gate" to the dirty word "hooker".

First of all, Watergate is the name of a hotel that was burglarized by Nixon's cronies searching for dirt on the happless DNC. You can read about it in the wikipedia (thank god for the wikipedia) if you need to, but clearly the scandal that drove Nixon out of the White House did not involve him using excessive amounts of water.

If only the hotel had been the Hilton/Best Western. Then we wouldn't be saddled with this meaningless suffix.

My second gripe about the name is that it puts the emphasis for the scandal on the hookers that were supposedly sometimes used in the influence peddling. As though influence peddling not involving prostitution would be fine.

Can't we have moral outrage stemming from the fact that Bush appoints lackies to key positions in government. And then those unqualified hacks, demoralize and deflate the angencies they're supposed to be leading. Which leads us to a disaster.

Isn't it enough that Porter Goss may have done to the CIA what Michael Brown did to FEMA?

But his swift and surprising resignation wasn't due to the fact that he was incompetent. It was because Bush & company couldn't keep this story under wraps any longer. (The scandalous behavior has apparently been going on for a decade or more)

So how about a new scandal? You can call it Competencegate.

The Rav Saga: Epilogue

So on our trip to Lewes, DE this weekend, Nelly and I finally caught the Rav making some funny noises at the gas station and had a chance to investigate. It turns out the muffler was rubbing up against the rear mudflap, and had actually burned a hole for itself through the hard-plastic.

Last night, after we got back, I removed all the mudflaps. I think that a lot of the odd noises that the Rav has been generating over the past 2-3 years are due to these crappy mudflaps. The screws and bolts used to hold them on were rusting or had already fallen out or had been removed and improperly replaced over the years. So taking them off led to a startlingly smooth and quiet ride in the Rav.

I'm hoping that removing the mud flaps will increase the fuel efficiency of the car (at least a little bit). I know that the weight + drag of the flaps isn't that significant, but I have to wonder if we removed all the mud flaps from all the SUVs that never go offroad in this country, maybe we'd save some gas.

Ah well, just pie in the sky.

As a bonus, here's a picture of the bottom of the Rav after I removed the flaps. Note where the plastic has bonded to the muffler.

He's a trooper, that Rav o'mine.