4 ms·

"So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you." What

by criley2 12y ago

"So anybody who happens to have a compromised immune system gets to fight your personalised microbes, perhaps fatally? How very ... Darwinian ... of you." What a sadly unscientific and ignorant answer. There are literally MILLIONS of types of bacteria. We REQUIRE millions of bacteria to simply exist and live as human beings. Not all bacteria is evil and will kill you. Most won't! In fact, if you kill all of your personal awesome bacteria, the harmful stuff can move in because you don't have any anymore. (Well if you "killed all of your own bacteria", you'd very likely be dead as well...) You get to fight my bacteria, and every humans bacteria, every day of your life. It's as normal as breathing air and eating food. Your mother colonizes you with bacteria at birth and through feeding. Our foods help us build immunities. Our friends and being outside and playing and working and everything we do exposes us to bacteria. Being exposed to bacteria isn't evil or wrong. Being weak to bacterial exposure is like being weak to sunlight-- it is going to dramatically change your life and make you very "abnormal" as a human. That's not our fault. "Soap and water have saved more lives than any medication, ever." Proper hygiene has saved those lives, of which soap and water played a role. You put the cart before the horse. HYGIENE saved lives -- soap and water was the mechanism used to achieve hygiene. " I take daily antibiotics, possibly forever. As a society, we don't just cleanse ourselves for our own well-being, we wash for others." This article isn't about giving yourself leprosy and then infecting immunocompromised people. For you to conflate "bad" bacteria with "good" bacteria is ignorant and massively hurtful to the cause of human health. If you had read the article, you would know that they're supplementing personal flora with Nitrosomonas eutropha. If Nitrosomonas eutropha can hurt you, you need to be in a bubble and NEVER exposed to any air, or the outside, or dirt, or any other humans. Herd immunity won't save you from something so common, normal and helpful to humanity. And hurting all of us just to help you, denying us the necessary and amazing flora that makes our lives possible, is selfish and Darwinian in it's own way. PLEASE respect that bacteria is ESSENTIAL to human life, and managing our own flora is ESSENTIAL to health and thriving. Just because someone wants to be healthy doesn't mean you have a right to accuse them of attacking you. If you're that sensitive, you need to protect yourself with heavy isolation. We're humans, not hermetically sealed robots. We are alive because of bacteria. Period.

XorNot 12y ago
The article is about surface external bacteria - which are very, very different to the bacterial colonies which live inside your digestive system (and also only there - if any of those get inside your circulatory system that's where most "flesh eating bacteria" horror stories start from). There's a naturalistic fallacy heavily at play here, because humans have never before lived in such close proximity in such high density dwellings as they do today. The idea that this doesn't merit some forward thinking on how we manage personal hygiene standards is ridiculous.
- graeme 12y ago
  Do you have any evidence for your beliefs? Skin flora is largely beneficial to hosts. Like internal bacteria, it can be disrupted and become pathogenic. Do you know of any studies that show that frequent washing with soap decreases pathogens and promotes beneficial skin flora? The anecdotal experience of people like me who stop washing with soap is that we smell better. This suggests that soap was disturbing our skin flora. I'm willing to be proven wrong on that point, but you need actual evidence. Calling something "a naturalistic fallacy" without evidence of your own is a perfect example of a fallacy fallacy. Edit: To be clear, I'm not just saying I smell good. Women spontaneously tell me "you smell good!" without knowing about my non-soap habit.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    A naturalistic fallacy is simply appealing to "this is way it is before we do anything". Others have presented the counter-evidence - i.e. human hygiene and life-expectancy and disease rates got way better with the introduction of hand-washing and soap. I'd think carefully about your anecdotal evidence. The social contract is we don't comment on matters of hygiene directly, and I know I couldn't smell how bad me and my schoolmates smelt after a couple of days field-trip out camping. That didn't mean we didn't.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      Strictly speaking, that is an "appeal to nature", which is a different thing than the naturalistic fallacy.

by criley2 12y ago

XorNot 12y ago

The article is about surface external bacteria - which are very, very different to the bacterial colonies which live inside your digestive system (and also only there - if any of those get inside your circulatory system that's where most "flesh eating bacteria" horror stories start from). There's a naturalistic fallacy heavily at play here, because humans have never before lived in such close proximity in such high density dwellings as they do today. The idea that this doesn't merit some forward thinking on how we manage personal hygiene standards is ridiculous.

graeme 12y ago
Do you have any evidence for your beliefs? Skin flora is largely beneficial to hosts. Like internal bacteria, it can be disrupted and become pathogenic. Do you know of any studies that show that frequent washing with soap decreases pathogens and promotes beneficial skin flora? The anecdotal experience of people like me who stop washing with soap is that we smell better. This suggests that soap was disturbing our skin flora. I'm willing to be proven wrong on that point, but you need actual evidence. Calling something "a naturalistic fallacy" without evidence of your own is a perfect example of a fallacy fallacy. Edit: To be clear, I'm not just saying I smell good. Women spontaneously tell me "you smell good!" without knowing about my non-soap habit.
- XorNot 12y ago
  A naturalistic fallacy is simply appealing to "this is way it is before we do anything". Others have presented the counter-evidence - i.e. human hygiene and life-expectancy and disease rates got way better with the introduction of hand-washing and soap. I'd think carefully about your anecdotal evidence. The social contract is we don't comment on matters of hygiene directly, and I know I couldn't smell how bad me and my schoolmates smelt after a couple of days field-trip out camping. That didn't mean we didn't.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Strictly speaking, that is an "appeal to nature", which is a different thing than the naturalistic fallacy.