Sometimes, I like to pull up Ovid and just start skimming journal articles and see where they take me. Here is where they took me today:

1. Do We Have Autoimmune Diseases Because We Evolved an Automatic Defense System Against Tuberculosis that Reacts Against Other Tissue if We Do NOt Get Tb?

About the effect of Tb on human evolution---one in four of us that did not die of something else, died prematurely from Tb before the modern era with antibiotics. That is probably true for the entire history of humanity, not just the last few hundred years. Recently, they discovered that the human HLA genes were picked up as moderns left Africa and bred with Neanderthals. The HLAs encode built in immunity and resistance to disease----as opposed to the strictly learned kind that you get when you are exposed to a new antigen and your B cells make an antibody (IgM then IgG for lasting immunity). The HLA genes gave moderns built in immunity to lots of things that they would encounter as they spread out across the world including, presumably the various types of mycobacteria which include Tb and leprosy (note that only a small portion of people can even get leprosy). HLAs also influence autoimmune disease, like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohns disease, reiter's syndrome. Some people think that we have so many autoimmune diseases in industrialized countries because the HLA portions of our genes that are supposed to be fighting Tb and other mycobacteria have nothing to do so they start attacking our own tissues instead. Which raises the question---are there less food allergies and allergies and asthma in third world countries because people there get the Tb. And, if they do not get Tb, they get the BCG vaccine (a bovine mycobacterium vaccine designed to prevent Tb infections)? We do not take it in the US for public health surveillance reasons, because Tb is so rare that it is easier just to test for Tb exposure with a Tb skin test and if you test positive you treat. The BCG gives you a positive Tb skin test whether you have Tb or not, so if you take the vaccine, you can not take a Tb skin test. However, there is a new blood test, the Tb spot that can be used instead of the Tb skin test and which is reliable even if you have had the BCG vaccine. So, should we be vaccinating with BCG both to reduce the incidence of Tb and to calm down our HLA genes so that they have something to do besides give us allergies and autoimmune diseases? And then use the Tb spot blood test to screen for Tb infection? It is worth considering.

2. Did Running Around Barefoot as Children Help Prevent MS?

Second random medical thought of the day. You know how they always used to say that no one who grew up in the South would ever get Multiple Sclerosis? This is back in the 70s and early 80s. And how it is no longer true. People from the south now get MS. They can give rats MS and if they give them a dose of BCG, their MS gets better---as if the immune system stops attacking the nervous system because it finds something better to fight. Here is my theory. What did people used to do in the South back before 1970? We used to run around barefoot all summer. We got chiggers, ticks. We got hookworms. Some of us had outhouses. We were exposed to all kinds of infections that people up north who wore their shoes and clothes when they went out to play did not get exposed to. I am wondering if all those infections that southern children were exposed to kept their immune systems so busy that they did not have time to start attacking normal body tissue. Now that kids in the south stay indoors and play video games and wear shoes if they go out and use bug spray--maybe now they are so sterile that they do not get enough infections to keep their inherited immunity busy.

If you are like me, you were brought up to believe that Hitler created fascism, antisemitism, ideas of racial purity and everything else for which he was known out of his own crazed imagination, and because he was gifted with a silver tongue, he was able to prove the truth of the old adage you can fool all of the people some of the time. Therefore, I was startled, amazed, astounded to read that as far back as 1889, Austrian business leaders, politicians and landowners were desperately trying to hold onto their own laboring class---their "human capital"--which was emigrating to the US in search of better wages and living conditions. In an attempt to keep that all important low wage labor that capital so desperately craves, Austrian leaders went to court and charged travel agents with being part of a Jewish conspiracy to lure "white" Austrians into slavery in America where they would be bred with Blacks so that their progeny would live in slavery forever.

Here is a link:

http://www.americanacademy.de/sites/default/files/ZAHRA_BJ25.pdf

Imagine growing up in Austria, listening to the equivalent of the Koch Brothers telling you that Jewish people want to sell you into slavery. That they want to make sure that your children live in perpetual slavery. That your only hope is to stay at home in Austria and Germany and do what your masters----Austrian/German landowners and business leaders----tell you what to do.

Hitler did not create Nazi style fascism on his own. Hitler fulfilled the dreams of Austrian and German industrialists who were desperate to hold onto their "human capital"---the serfs, their slaves. And Hitler was able to seduce the Austrian and German people, because they had been brought up hearing that it was better to stay at home, even if that meant starving, than it was to go to another country where you risked being treated as less than human.