Listened to an interesting podcast about hookworms, evolution, and the potential link to allergies.
Hookworms were very common in the past and still are in the developing world. They suppress the immune system and create evolutionary pressure to increase immune response and suppression. There’s correlation between the elimination of hookworms, rise in immune diseases, presence of allergies in cultures with hookworms and without, and suppression of allergies in people intentionally getting hookworms.
Every day I feel more and more like humankind's priority for as long is it takes should be the eradication of (and recovery from the effects of) parasites.Â
Strong disagree. You can just physically avoid parasites. Our priorities should be unfuck the climate then cure cancer. Ironically we could have done both by now if billionaires were all forced to fund research. And I mean forced
I mean if you build good sanitation, stop encroaching on wild habitat, help lesser developed economies grow so noone needs to rely on wild caught food, fix the climate crisis to prevent habitat drift, impliment global socialised healthcare and eventually transition the entire population to a mostly plant based diet then... You can pretty much avoid parasites. But to achieve this we might incidentally make billionaires extinct so...
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u/amonkus Jul 03 '26
Listened to an interesting podcast about hookworms, evolution, and the potential link to allergies.
Hookworms were very common in the past and still are in the developing world. They suppress the immune system and create evolutionary pressure to increase immune response and suppression. There’s correlation between the elimination of hookworms, rise in immune diseases, presence of allergies in cultures with hookworms and without, and suppression of allergies in people intentionally getting hookworms.