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I vaguely recall reading something on Usenet or something that would have made it onto Slashdot or Plastic in the late 90s/early 00s, where someone treated thei
by xenophonf 10y ago
I vaguely recall reading something on Usenet or something that would have made it onto Slashdot or Plastic in the late 90s/early 00s, where someone treated their allergies or asthma or something by deliberately infecting themselves with a parasitic worm---I forget which, maybe hookworm. They actually went to so far as to cultivate the worm in some medium that they could apply to their stomach using a custom-made patch, started pooping oocytes, and then completed the usual treatment course for whatever it was they infected themselves with. I can't recall if it cleared up the condition from which they were suffering, and obviously, this wasn't any kind of controlled trial. Lord knows that such a study would give an IRB six fits, and rightly so!
- dzhiurgis 10y agoWhat is Plastic?
- xenophonf 10y agoOh you sweet summer child, who never got to experience Suck.com or Plastic in their (respective) heydays. Your world is objectively poorer as a result, but least the Brunching Shuttlecocks is still online!
- josephmx 10y agoLook how special, important, and better you are as a result of being 10 years older than a random stranger :)
- rsync 10y agoI would argue that experiencing suck.com, in it's time and element, was a very unique and valuable experience.
- xenophonf 10y agoOlder, yes, but sadly, the wisdom I expected to attend age has not yet appeared. :)
- xenophonf 10y agoAw, you people downvoted this? It was the perfect take-down to my damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn comment. Sorry, @josephmx. :(
- josephmx 10y agoI'm sure I'll live, thanks though :)
- dzhiurgis 10y agoI was on Slashdot for a while, but I assume those were few years older. I also missed out on newsgroups and BBSes, poor me :) Is it more of a reddit than HN of the time?
- xenophonf 10y agoI'd say that Plastic's closest living relative is probably MetaFilter. Reddit feels closer to Usenet because of the multiple subreddits and, frankly, because of all the trolling and shitposting that goes on. Actually, let me clarify that: The content/discussions found in most subreddits would fit comfortably into the alt.* newsgroup hierarchy. The methods by which we discuss things on the Internet have changed, but the kinds of things we talk about haven't, really.
- Eric_WVGG 10y agoHelminthic therapy. I have a friend who did it for his Krohn's with good results.
- zenon 10y agoIt might have been Jasper Lawrence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Lawrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Lawrence), who wrote about his experience on kuro5hin. I think this is the link: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971, but the site is sadly defunct now.
- xenophonf 10y agoThat's the one. I didn't realize Rusty put a "Disallow: *" in his robots.txt. It made me really sad to discover that Kuro5hin wasn't spidered by the Internet Archive.
- kbenson 10y agoIt was just a few weeks ago that it was posted here that Kuro5hin is dead[1]. :( 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609308
- xenophonf 10y agoThanks. I am really, really happy to see that Rusty's alive and doing well! And that there's a chance the site will return in static, archival-ready form.
- xenophonf 10y agoWow, I had no idea that the guy tried to actually sell his treatment to other people! There's no way the FDA would let that fly without doing proper, controlled studies.
- ArtDev 10y agoIt was covered by Radiolab: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91951-an-update-on-hookworms/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91951-an-update-on-hookworms/
- ayooo 10y agoI see this referenced continually online as if it's a miracle cure/weight loss aid. I had pinworm, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It felt like I was being stabbed at random intervals in the abdomen. Eventually went to hospital, they said it was probably IBS and sent me home. Consulted Dr. Google for a second opinion and it mentioned worms could cause abdominal pain. Sure enough I found worms after a bowel movement and, unfortunately, that was when they began crawling out my anus at night... yup. Had eaten barely anything for a week, so I did lose a ton of weight I suppose. The psychological damage on the other hand was the worst part. I avoided touching other people and was convinced parasitic eggs were everywhere on door handles etc.
- Chinjut 10y agoHoly moly! Did you end up going back to doctors after actually finding the worms? Did they believe you then?
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI'm imagining a great moment where ayooo shoves a cup of worm-laden feces into a doctor's hands.
- ayooo 10y agoIn fairness, they told me to come back if the pain came back (it miraculously recided after a few hours while sitting on a chair in A&E). They thought IBS was most likely. They also gave me an antispasmatic to go home with which did nothing, which made me do the research and find the wrigglies lol. Mebendazole did the trick. I still check a bit closer after wiping to this day though! Fun side note: the A&E was so over capacity and understaffed (Ireland) I had to awkwardly ask for the IV drip to be removed because it had finished and my blood was tracking back up the tube.... I was 17 and my parents weren't allowed in with me :(
- wormtemp 10y agoWhile we are trading anecdotes about worms and allergies, I can report that an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides infection made my allergies worse.
- 55555 10y agoI deliberately infected myself with 25 hookworm, twice, in order to alleviate "allergies". In short, basically, it is indeed effective, but can have side effects of its own. Also, I don't think it's so clearcut that I have allergies because I'm missing 50 hookworm so much as because my immune system developed without a broad range of 'germs' and 'parasites' and other natural cofactors. As a treatment option for quality-of-life, though, it's pretty sound. Helminthic therapy is pretty analogous to supplementing probiotics, and directly analogous to supplementing the subtype of probiotics known as soil-based organisms.