6 ms·

Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs and Values

80 points by he0001 4y ago

kurthr 4y ago
I'd read this with some interest, but if this citation in the introduction is correct then it's not a small deal. "Toxoplasma gondii, the parasitic protozoon of cats, infects about one-third of the human population in both developed and developing countries (Tenter et al., 2000)."
- bena 4y ago
  It's the entire reason people want to study Toxoplasmosis. If it affects anything, that's going to mean a lot of people.
- sp332 4y ago
  CDC puts it at over 40 million in the USA, so over 10%. https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/index.html Edit: here's that paper from Tenter et al. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/#__ffn_sectitle https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/#__ffn_... As a consequence, no two tests produce the same results in all cases, even when carried out in the same laboratory [45–54]. In addition, prevalence rates vary over time and with the age of the individuals included in the study [55–68]. The strongest thing they were willing to say is that it's higher in Latin America and west Africa, and lower in colder climates. Here's a direct link to Table 3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/table/T3/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/table/T...
- chabons 4y ago
  I'm wondering if they controlled for cat ownership (as a likely source of infection), or if any of the variation can be attributed to the types of people who own cats.
  - thinkingemote 4y ago
    ive heard that many get it from eating or working with contaminated food
- marcellus23 4y ago
  A couple important notes about toxoplasmosis (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, this is gleaned from Wikipedia and the CDC website): - Cats only get toxoplasmosis from prey, and it only sticks around in the cat for a few weeks, so if you have an indoor-only cat that never goes outside and you don't have any pests, you're probably fine - Even if your cat does go outside, the parasite doesn't become infectious until 1 to 5 days after it is shed in a cat’s feces, so if you're cleaning the litter box daily, you're probably fine as well
  - ali7388 4y ago
    Where I live, streets are littered with stray cats and their feces. Every owner says they are "responsible" but numbers speak otherwise!
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Wait, so if it sticks around in the cat for just a few weeks, is that also true for humans? Or is it permanent for us, and cats are just better at getting rid of it?
    - marcellus23 4y ago
      I'm not sure. That's based on this excerpt from Wikipedia[0]: > Cats excrete the pathogen in their feces for a number of weeks after contracting the disease, generally by eating an infected intermediate host that could include mammals (like rodents) or birds. Oocyst shedding usually starts from the third day after ingestion of infected intermediate hosts, and may continue for weeks. The oocysts are not infective when excreted. After about a day, the oocyst undergoes a process called sporulation and becomes potentially pathogenic. I guess I was not quite correct -- it may be that it sticks around longer in the cat, but it is only excreted for a few weeks. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Transmission
ryanklee 4y ago
If it's true that toxoplasmosis is is present in 1/3 - 1/2 of the population, I immediately find any specific findings like this dubious since the scale of confounding factors must be enormous. Yes, they controlled for some, like malnutrition, but that's hardly the whole story. It's way more likely that there is something else (maybe many other things!) that explain the correlation. It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit.
- ineptech 4y ago
  I don't follow; doesn't a larger affected population make it easier to control for confounds?
  - ryanklee 4y ago
    If you identify them.
    - ineptech 4y ago
      I still don't follow. You don't have to control for each confounding variable if you select your pool at random, like they did here.
      - adr1an 4y ago
        Getting a random pool works when your size (n) is not so many magnitudeblevels below of totalvpopulation (N). For example, say we are about to measure X variable on a deer population of 10k. If we capture 100 dears, we are good. Of we get less, maybe too. But with humans, the population is huge. This doesnt mean its impossible.
- tomlockwood 4y ago
  > It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit. Yeah and also one that gets highly upvoted on the sites of people who think a certain way. Social media really has contributed to clickbait confirmation bias brainrot.
- 4y ago
bondarchuk 4y ago
Did not control for cat ownership AFAICT.
- howmayiannoyyou 4y ago
  Anyone who has spent time on OKCupid can speak to the correlation of cat ownerships and political perspective, and the more cats owned the more magnified the political/social passion.
  - WaxProlix 4y ago
    Does that lay intuition match with the proposed findings in TFA? I can copy the relevant sentence from the abstract, in case you didn't see it: > Infected women scored higher in tribalism and lower in cultural liberalism
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      We picked terrible words for political stuff. Cultural liberalism is a pro free speech, "classical liberal"[0] (in modern times considered conservative) view. > Cultural Leftists are people who believe “that minorities must be protected from psychological harm arising from forms of dominant culture, and that a radical transformation of science, institutions, narratives and culture can redistribute power from dominant to subaltern groups.” > Cultural Liberals, on the other hand, “prioritise freedom of expression, equal treatment without regard to identity, the scientific method, freedom of conscience and the primacy of classical liberal traditions of law.” > And finally, Cultural Conservatives are people who “prioritise the defense of national, ethnic and religious traditions. The dominant form of cultural conservatism in Britain is cultural patriotism.”[1] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism [1]https://iea.org.uk/the-rise-of-cultural-socialism-a-review-of-two-reports/ https://iea.org.uk/the-rise-of-cultural-socialism-a-review-o...
      - bena 4y ago
        We must also consider where we source our definitions from. The IEA is a right-wing think tank. They have a vested interest in promoting certain points of view. And to portray those opposed to them in certain ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs
arwhatever 4y ago
Extremely poor wording in the first page or so: > This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, scoring higher in Tribalism and lower in Cultural liberalism and Anti-Authoritarianism. - Is the author referring to the infected or to the free group here? > The stress-coping hypothesis suggests that many toxoplasmosis-associated changes, e.g., higher extroversion in infected women and lower in men, or lower suspiciousness of infected women and higher in suspiciousness of infected men (all in comparison to non-infected peers) can be interpreted as gender-dependent stress coping reaction. - Using “among infected men/women” in place of “of” would add a lot of clarity here. I believe I’ll stop reading the article.
- krzyk 4y ago
  I believe the authors are Czech, so I would give them a bit of slack regarding the language, they are not native English speakers.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - arwhatever 4y ago
    Good to keep in mind, and I shouldn’t be overly harsh. I considered the possibility and discarded it, given that the word choices so strongly resemble poorly-spoken native English speakers whom I have personally known. But I could have confirmed by looking.
IshKebab 4y ago
Is there any way to tell if you're infected?
- s5300 4y ago
  Do you have any hazy memories of situations eerily similar to this? https://imgur.com/a/OrOtoPu https://imgur.com/a/OrOtoPu
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    I guess I don't have it then, since I don't look like that. But that picture is a gem, even if I'd guess it's not very scientifically accurate!
- petre 4y ago
  Yes, there are IgG and IgM tests given to pregnant women, because the parasite can cause miscarriage or stillbirth.
thinkingemote 4y ago
Interesting that many scientists now think that any behaviour changes are not due to the parasite controlling the brain (which is how the parasite spreads in rats and cats!) but due to reactions dealing with long term stress caused by the infection. One could assume that other long term pain that causes stress could see the same results in behaviours and the associated sex differences.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
NickM 4y ago
Suppose this is accurate; how difficult/expensive is it to get tested for this, and if you have it, is there a cure? Regardless of the effects it may or may not have on the brain, the paper mentions that "the differences might be side-effects of long-term mild inflammatory reaction", and for general health reasons I'd certainly prefer not to have permanent long-term mild inflammation.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  There are treatments today, but they are mostly exotic drugs today because the parasites are thought to be harmless. Martin Shkreli (pharma bro, however it's spelled) got into a lot of hot water for buying up a toxoplasmosa treatment and jacking the price by 100x.
hackerlight 4y ago
"responders via an online survey" so there's a self-selection bias. You are selecting the people that chose to seek out a diagnosis of this infection, and such people are probably more neurotic and anxious. Also did they control for age, relationship status and number of cats owned? Multiple cats owned is sometimes caused by loneliness in my experience so the causality may be easy to mix up.
- ineptech 4y ago
  I don't think this is true; it looks like they collected a pool of participants, asked them questions, and then found out who was/wasn't infected. See the "Materials and Methods" section.
kneebonian 4y ago
> We measured beliefs and values of 2315 responders via an online survey (477 Toxoplasma-infected) using the Political Beliefs and Values Inventory (PI34). This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, s/study/internet poll/g
t0bia_s 4y ago
Flegr, author mentioned many times in article is bizarre Czech scientist who predicted streets full of dead bodies because of covid. You cannot take this man seriously. He also looks funny. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Flegr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Flegr
- sufehmi 4y ago
  It actually happened in Indonesia - people died en masse in their homes, died in hospital's front yards, hospital's hallway, etc ; too many got infected, that the healthcare system simply unable to keep up. We even experienced severe medical oxygen shortage for months. The only reason they didn't die on the streets was because we're under lockdown at the moment. So instead dying on the streets, they died indoors.
Euphorbium 4y ago
If this is self report, most people dont know their status of infection.

80 points by he0001 4y ago

I'd read this with some interest, but if this citation in the introduction is correct then it's not a small deal. "Toxoplasma gondii, the parasitic protozoon of cats, infects about one-third of the human population in both developed and developing countries (Tenter et al., 2000)."

bena 4y ago
It's the entire reason people want to study Toxoplasmosis. If it affects anything, that's going to mean a lot of people.
sp332 4y ago
CDC puts it at over 40 million in the USA, so over 10%. https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/index.html Edit: here's that paper from Tenter et al. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/#__ffn_sectitle https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/#__ffn_... As a consequence, no two tests produce the same results in all cases, even when carried out in the same laboratory [45–54]. In addition, prevalence rates vary over time and with the age of the individuals included in the study [55–68]. The strongest thing they were willing to say is that it's higher in Latin America and west Africa, and lower in colder climates. Here's a direct link to Table 3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/table/T3/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109627/table/T...
chabons 4y ago
I'm wondering if they controlled for cat ownership (as a likely source of infection), or if any of the variation can be attributed to the types of people who own cats.
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  ive heard that many get it from eating or working with contaminated food
marcellus23 4y ago
A couple important notes about toxoplasmosis (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, this is gleaned from Wikipedia and the CDC website): - Cats only get toxoplasmosis from prey, and it only sticks around in the cat for a few weeks, so if you have an indoor-only cat that never goes outside and you don't have any pests, you're probably fine - Even if your cat does go outside, the parasite doesn't become infectious until 1 to 5 days after it is shed in a cat’s feces, so if you're cleaning the litter box daily, you're probably fine as well
- ali7388 4y ago
  Where I live, streets are littered with stray cats and their feces. Every owner says they are "responsible" but numbers speak otherwise!
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Wait, so if it sticks around in the cat for just a few weeks, is that also true for humans? Or is it permanent for us, and cats are just better at getting rid of it?
  - marcellus23 4y ago
    I'm not sure. That's based on this excerpt from Wikipedia[0]: > Cats excrete the pathogen in their feces for a number of weeks after contracting the disease, generally by eating an infected intermediate host that could include mammals (like rodents) or birds. Oocyst shedding usually starts from the third day after ingestion of infected intermediate hosts, and may continue for weeks. The oocysts are not infective when excreted. After about a day, the oocyst undergoes a process called sporulation and becomes potentially pathogenic. I guess I was not quite correct -- it may be that it sticks around longer in the cat, but it is only excreted for a few weeks. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Transmission

ryanklee 4y ago

If it's true that toxoplasmosis is is present in 1/3 - 1/2 of the population, I immediately find any specific findings like this dubious since the scale of confounding factors must be enormous. Yes, they controlled for some, like malnutrition, but that's hardly the whole story. It's way more likely that there is something else (maybe many other things!) that explain the correlation. It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit.

ineptech 4y ago
I don't follow; doesn't a larger affected population make it easier to control for confounds?
- ryanklee 4y ago
  If you identify them.
  - ineptech 4y ago
    I still don't follow. You don't have to control for each confounding variable if you select your pool at random, like they did here.
    - adr1an 4y ago
      Getting a random pool works when your size (n) is not so many magnitudeblevels below of totalvpopulation (N). For example, say we are about to measure X variable on a deer population of 10k. If we capture 100 dears, we are good. Of we get less, maybe too. But with humans, the population is huge. This doesnt mean its impossible.
tomlockwood 4y ago
> It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit. Yeah and also one that gets highly upvoted on the sites of people who think a certain way. Social media really has contributed to clickbait confirmation bias brainrot.
4y ago

bondarchuk 4y ago

Did not control for cat ownership AFAICT.

howmayiannoyyou 4y ago
Anyone who has spent time on OKCupid can speak to the correlation of cat ownerships and political perspective, and the more cats owned the more magnified the political/social passion.
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  Does that lay intuition match with the proposed findings in TFA? I can copy the relevant sentence from the abstract, in case you didn't see it: > Infected women scored higher in tribalism and lower in cultural liberalism
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    We picked terrible words for political stuff. Cultural liberalism is a pro free speech, "classical liberal"[0] (in modern times considered conservative) view. > Cultural Leftists are people who believe “that minorities must be protected from psychological harm arising from forms of dominant culture, and that a radical transformation of science, institutions, narratives and culture can redistribute power from dominant to subaltern groups.” > Cultural Liberals, on the other hand, “prioritise freedom of expression, equal treatment without regard to identity, the scientific method, freedom of conscience and the primacy of classical liberal traditions of law.” > And finally, Cultural Conservatives are people who “prioritise the defense of national, ethnic and religious traditions. The dominant form of cultural conservatism in Britain is cultural patriotism.”[1] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism [1]https://iea.org.uk/the-rise-of-cultural-socialism-a-review-of-two-reports/ https://iea.org.uk/the-rise-of-cultural-socialism-a-review-o...
    - bena 4y ago
      We must also consider where we source our definitions from. The IEA is a right-wing think tank. They have a vested interest in promoting certain points of view. And to portray those opposed to them in certain ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs

arwhatever 4y ago

Extremely poor wording in the first page or so: > This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, scoring higher in Tribalism and lower in Cultural liberalism and Anti-Authoritarianism. - Is the author referring to the infected or to the free group here? > The stress-coping hypothesis suggests that many toxoplasmosis-associated changes, e.g., higher extroversion in infected women and lower in men, or lower suspiciousness of infected women and higher in suspiciousness of infected men (all in comparison to non-infected peers) can be interpreted as gender-dependent stress coping reaction. - Using “among infected men/women” in place of “of” would add a lot of clarity here. I believe I’ll stop reading the article.

krzyk 4y ago
I believe the authors are Czech, so I would give them a bit of slack regarding the language, they are not native English speakers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- arwhatever 4y ago
  Good to keep in mind, and I shouldn’t be overly harsh. I considered the possibility and discarded it, given that the word choices so strongly resemble poorly-spoken native English speakers whom I have personally known. But I could have confirmed by looking.

IshKebab 4y ago

Is there any way to tell if you're infected?

s5300 4y ago
Do you have any hazy memories of situations eerily similar to this? https://imgur.com/a/OrOtoPu https://imgur.com/a/OrOtoPu
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  I guess I don't have it then, since I don't look like that. But that picture is a gem, even if I'd guess it's not very scientifically accurate!
petre 4y ago
Yes, there are IgG and IgM tests given to pregnant women, because the parasite can cause miscarriage or stillbirth.

thinkingemote 4y ago

Interesting that many scientists now think that any behaviour changes are not due to the parasite controlling the brain (which is how the parasite spreads in rats and cats!) but due to reactions dealing with long term stress caused by the infection. One could assume that other long term pain that causes stress could see the same results in behaviours and the associated sex differences.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

NickM 4y ago

Suppose this is accurate; how difficult/expensive is it to get tested for this, and if you have it, is there a cure? Regardless of the effects it may or may not have on the brain, the paper mentions that "the differences might be side-effects of long-term mild inflammatory reaction", and for general health reasons I'd certainly prefer not to have permanent long-term mild inflammation.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
There are treatments today, but they are mostly exotic drugs today because the parasites are thought to be harmless. Martin Shkreli (pharma bro, however it's spelled) got into a lot of hot water for buying up a toxoplasmosa treatment and jacking the price by 100x.

hackerlight 4y ago

"responders via an online survey" so there's a self-selection bias. You are selecting the people that chose to seek out a diagnosis of this infection, and such people are probably more neurotic and anxious. Also did they control for age, relationship status and number of cats owned? Multiple cats owned is sometimes caused by loneliness in my experience so the causality may be easy to mix up.

ineptech 4y ago
I don't think this is true; it looks like they collected a pool of participants, asked them questions, and then found out who was/wasn't infected. See the "Materials and Methods" section.

kneebonian 4y ago

> We measured beliefs and values of 2315 responders via an online survey (477 Toxoplasma-infected) using the Political Beliefs and Values Inventory (PI34). This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, s/study/internet poll/g

t0bia_s 4y ago

Flegr, author mentioned many times in article is bizarre Czech scientist who predicted streets full of dead bodies because of covid. You cannot take this man seriously. He also looks funny. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Flegr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Flegr

sufehmi 4y ago
It actually happened in Indonesia - people died en masse in their homes, died in hospital's front yards, hospital's hallway, etc ; too many got infected, that the healthcare system simply unable to keep up. We even experienced severe medical oxygen shortage for months. The only reason they didn't die on the streets was because we're under lockdown at the moment. So instead dying on the streets, they died indoors.

Euphorbium 4y ago

If this is self report, most people dont know their status of infection.