{"id":3167,"date":"2012-08-26T09:29:28","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T13:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/o-matic.com\/blog-archive-2022\/\/?p=3167"},"modified":"2012-09-06T14:01:05","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T18:01:05","slug":"bring-the-parasites-back-inside-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/o-matic.com\/blog-archive-2022\/blog\/2012\/08\/26\/bring-the-parasites-back-inside-us\/","title":{"rendered":"bring the parasites back inside us"},"content":{"rendered":"

New connections are being made between inflammation in the womb and the occurrence of autism in offspring. My ears perk up, as I see how many Chinese herbs are used to treat various inflammatory conditions (or general ones) and some of those botanical sources are highly invasive species, who thrive in disturbed, adverse, declined, urban, asthmatic ecosystems (see Invasive Plant Medicine<\/a>\u00a0for a treatise and list by herbalist Tim Scott) .<\/p>\n

from
\n“An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism<\/a>,” \u00a0T<\/em>he New York Times, Aug 26, 2012:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0More recently, William Parker<\/a> at Duke University has chimed in. He\u2019s not, by training, an autism expert. But his work focuses on the immune system and its role in biology and disease, so he\u2019s particularly qualified to point out the following: the immune system we consider normal is actually an evolutionary aberration.<\/p>\n

Some years back, he began comparing wild sewer rats with clean lab rats. They were, in his words, \u201ccompletely different organisms.\u201d Wild rats tightly controlled inflammation. Not so the lab rats. Why? The wild rodents were rife with parasites. Parasites are famous for limiting inflammation.<\/p>\n

Humans also evolved with plenty of parasites. Dr. Parker and many others think that we\u2019re biologically dependent on the immune suppression provided by these hangers-on and that their removal has left us prone to inflammation. \u201cWe were willing to put up with hay fever<\/a>, even some autoimmune disease,\u201d he told me recently. \u201cBut autism? That\u2019s it! You\u2019ve got to stop this insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does stopping the insanity entail? Fix the maternal dysregulation, and you\u2019ve most likely prevented autism. That\u2019s the lesson from rodent experiments. In one, Swiss scientists created a lineage of mice with a genetically reinforced anti-inflammatory signal. Then the scientists inflamed the pregnant mice. The babies emerged fine \u2014 no behavioral problems. The take-away: Control inflammation during pregnancy, and it won\u2019t interfere with fetal brain development.<\/p>\n

For people, a drug that\u2019s safe for use during pregnancy may help. A probiotic, many of which have anti-inflammatory properties, may also be of benefit. Not coincidentally, asthma researchers are arriving at similar conclusions; prevention of the lung disease will begin with the pregnant woman. Dr. Parker has more radical ideas: pre-emptive restoration of \u201cdomesticated\u201d parasites in everybody \u2014 worms developed solely for the purpose of correcting the wayward, postmodern immune system.<\/p>\n

Practically speaking, this seems beyond improbable. And yet, a trial is under way at the Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine<\/a> testing a medicalized parasite called Trichuris suis in autistic adults.<\/p>\n

First used medically to treat inflammatory bowel disease<\/a>, the whipworm, which is native to pigs, has anecdotally shown benefit in autistic children.<\/p>\n

And really, if you spend enough time wading through the science, Dr. Parker\u2019s idea \u2014 an ecosystem restoration project, essentially \u2014 not only fails to seem outrageous, but also seems inevitable.<\/p>\n

Since time immemorial, a very specific community of organisms \u2014 microbes, parasites, some viruses \u2014 has aggregated to form the human superorganism. Mounds of evidence suggest that our immune system anticipates these inputs and that, when they go missing, the organism comes unhinged.<\/p>\n

Future doctors will need to correct the postmodern tendency toward immune dysregulation. Evolution has provided us with a road map: the original accretion pattern of the superorganism. Preventive medicine<\/a> will need, by strange necessity, to emulate the patterns from deep in our past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Addendum:<\/strong> Colleague Marianne Petit<\/a> sent me a link to a blog post taking this article apart. Such a good comeuppance for me, to remember to distinguish between exciting poetics, and well-wrought scientific inquiry:<\/p>\n

Emily Willingham,\u00a0Autism, immunity, inflammation, and the New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n
As he closes with two paragraphs in which he uses, without preamble, the word \u201csuperorganism\u201d twice, Velasquez-Manoff then violates science yet again by calling this plan to colonize all people with worms an \u201cecosystem restoration project.\u201d Never mind the plain fact that you simply\u00a0can\u2019t go home again<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0when it comes to ecosystems and that colonizing our guts with pig parasites isn\u2019t exactly replaying our evolutionary history. Either way, we are not the organisms we were 10,000 years ago or even 1000 years ago, not even counting the worms, and we won\u2019t be again. Talking about \u201cdays of yore\u201d and \u201ctime immemorial\u201d doesn\u2019t backtrack the collective changes our species has accumulated since the good old days of rampant parasitic infestations and high infant mortality. And my hope is that articles like this one won\u2019t backtrack us to viewing all of autism as rooted in immune dysfunction and find ourselves once again staring into the abyss of vaccine panic.<\/div>\n

<\/P><\/p>\n

What we have here is an argument that relies on shaky and shifting hypotheses of autism and autoimmune epidemics and hygiene, built using sparse data and scientific hints, a poor understanding of basic evolution and ecology, and a paradox of calling for a return to a more infectious past to \u201ccure\u201d autism while blaming immune-dysregulated, occasionally infected mothers of the present for \u2026\u00a0 autism. In his closing, Velasquez-Manoff argues that evolution provided us with a roadmap of the original microbial and parasitic ecosystems we once were, one that, presumably, if we follow it, will guide us out of the \u201cinsanity\u201d and \u201caffliction\u201d that is autism. If it\u2019s possible, that\u2019s where he\u2019s most wrong. Evolution isn\u2019t something that happens with a plan. To describe it in those terms is to have a profound failure of understanding of what evolution is. Where we\u2019re going, evolutionarily speaking, there are no roads. \u00a0And it would be better for most of us if there weren\u2019t any parasitic worms, either.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New connections are being made between inflammation in the womb and the occurrence of autism in offspring. My ears perk up, as I see how many Chinese herbs are used to treat various inflammatory conditions (or general ones) and some of those botanical sources are highly invasive species, who thrive in disturbed, adverse, declined, urban, … <\/p>\n

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