You know, you can still find articles that refer to the “heritable” nature of mental illnesses like schiz

The absolutely STOOOPID notion that something common like Schiz was genetic was repeated so many times in the press that most of the public thinks it’s actually true. That one drives me nuts. Yeah sure there are probably susceptability genes but those exist for everything. Big deal. It’s like looking for the genes responsible for different modes of Calcium absorption in an effort to explain why people get broken bones. idiots. It’s no big deal to be wrong, I’m probably wrong all the time. But it’s another thing entirely to be a geneticist and completely unaware of the theory of natural selection.

My dad told me that parents used to be terrifed of Polio. In my generation (I was a teen in the 80s) it wasn’t even something we talked about. It was like black and white history book stuff. 😎 What a blessing.
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As for STDs, Herpes causes Cerebral Palsy. That right there should scare people to death. Odds are good that STDs are behind a lot of illness in children, maybe even things like Autism. Viral infections (especially Herpes) can cause high blood pressure during pregnancy. There is no telling how that might alter the physical and mental development of some children. When this stuff gets wiped out (and it will) there is no telling how much healthier we will be. It’s going to be a different world.
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As for bad and OVERplentiful high calorie food… eeeeee…. all you have to do is look around at the expanding waistlines of Americans. Who knows what else it might be doing to us. It’s certainly not natural to our species. Let me just brag for a moment that my wife and I are in our late 30s. We both weigh within 5 pounds or so of what we weighed in our early 20s. Thats a lot of exercise and salad… 😎

That one totally slipped by me. I guess I don’t do a lot of reading on food born illness, hehe. Maybe I should since Salmonella might actually affect me someday unlike most of the things I read about.

It’s been known for several decades that turtles carried salmonella. They even quit selling pet turtles in the USA in the 70s I think because of the risk to children.

100% absolutely. I’ll keep any SSA/Cochran stuff in the other thread.

You know anal sex doesn’t create pathogens. If a couple is free of STDs remains monogamous – then they don’t magically create new pathogens.
Certainly that group of gay men could be looked at if a disease free sample was needed.
Perhaps I am too sensitive here – but it seemed like you were veering awfully close to the ‘gay men as disease ridden’ point of view (ala Cameron etc).

Patrick, that comment comes from an evolutionary biologist who stays in touch with researchers and the comment is not that old.
There was no sarcasm intended, and I don’t see evidence of it. Is it possible you were looking for something where it didn’t exist?
While safe sex practices have improved greatly for both the hetero and homosexual populations
1.) It is not false to say that gay men have more sexual contacts than straight men, and that is especially true the younger they are. That , coupled with the lack of use of condoms with every single sexual contact, causes transmission of pathogens. Introduction of pathogens takes place with oral contact as well.
2.) In addition, the lower colon and the rectum, lined with a thin layer of cells makes it particularly susceptible to infections of all kinds. Its biology and structure provide a fertile breeding ground for pathogens and for their entry into other tissues since that thin layer of cell are prone to lesions. Even a monogamous gay couple is likely to have exchanged pathogens if they have practiced anal sex since the rectum, unlike the heavily muscousal vagina, doesn’t have a shedding mechanism that works as the vagina does.
Thus, celibate people would make the best candidates for use in a study sample. This would be true if we were trying to find out if something was sexually tranmissable in anyone–use a control group of people who haven’t had sexual contact to see if something is spread sexually or not.

ay men as a group tend to have extraordinarily high infection rates and present with many pathogens, a situation that would make finding other things nearly impossible

You know the first group of men that acquired HIV and than AIDS did in fact often have multiple infections. However, lots of gay men are very healthy and have never had STDs. Certainly they could fill requirements for such a study from monogamous gay couples who are disease free. The way you make it sound like an impossiblity is frankly insulting.

No problem, Warren,
I lost track of the distinction between the first post on PANDAS and the second.

Nothing in all of mental health is more “genetic” than autism and even that cookie has completely crumbled.
California’s Autism Increase Not Due To Better Counting, Diagnosis

About time! You know, you can still find articles that refer to the “heritable” nature of mental illnesses like schiz; while I understand that, yes, there is ample evidence that mental illness are clustered in some families more than others, it is truly misleading, considering all we have learned over the last several years, to keep seeing the word “heritable” instead of a phrase like “a familial connection” or “possible heritable connection.”
After all, while they’ve identified pathogenic causes in some % of schiz, they’ve not yet identified a genetic link. I just wish there was greater attention to language.
Considering the spread of the herpes viruses, it wouldn’t surprise me if some a lot of things will be traced to STDs. Maybe, when you think of it, STD’s are nature’s way of trying to make us monogamous and if so, it looks like we’ve not gotten the message.
The autism numbers are astounding, no matter how they are counted, it seems. Some toxic environmental agent or something pathogenic seems to be at work. One even wonders if all the fruits and veggies that come from Central and South America might not have introduced something we are unaware of.
I live in the the greater SF Bay Area and here in CA we have a rich source of our own fruits and vegetables from our San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, but for a long time now, in the winter we get a steady stream of produce from out of the country. We have problems keeping track of what our own agribusiness people are doing, and my guess is that we don’t know at all what we are eating from those other countries.
We have already had many problems with contaminated produce from Mexico. Sometimes the contaminants come from humans, and other times from irrigation contaminated by animals. One wonders.
There are certainly many new materials in the environment that weren’t around 20-30 years ago, and they will be looked at as possible culprits and rightfully so. Certainly the processed foods we eat as well as the chemicals we use to grow food and the hormones we inject into our meats are other possible culprits, but I can think of one other thing that has changed a great deal in that time–the proliferation of kids being fed fast foods. (kind of negates what I said about fruits and veggies since so many kids never eat them).
So much of our “food” comes out of a box –they are suspect, but what about the places that serve fast food? Think that MacDonald’s and Burger King and Taco Bell are havens for the growth of lots of creepy things? (Heck, even so-called quality restaurants are often flagged for their filth.) So, how about all those kids preparing and serving that fast food? I know, our own kitchen counters are loaded with bugs, but multiply what our families bring home to those counters to arrive at the number that abounds in some of those fast food places.
Actually, my child-rearing days are over, but it makes me sick for a variety of reasons to see kids who’ve just cut their teeth fed what those places serve because mom and dad are too lazy or tired to give the child a real breakfast, lunch, or dinner or too lenient to say, “No, no MacDonald’s.”
Rant over.