Killing Germs May Be Hazardous to Your Health

October 31, 2007 // 1 Comment »

Oh boy – this is another one of those moments in life when you realise that science doesn’t always serve us well. Firstly we have become use to people telling us that ’science has proved it’ and unless we get the scientific approval it can’t be true. Secondly this is what we’ve inherently know is true for years but we’ve not believed it. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should automatically believe that its right to do it. Triclosan is just one such culprit.

Our war on microbes has toughened them. Now, new science tells us we should embrace bacteria.

Oct 20, 2007

Behold yourself, for a moment, as an organism. A trillion cells stuck together, arrayed into tissues and organs and harnessed by your DNA to the elemental goals of survival and propagation. But is that all? An electron microscope would reveal that you are teeming with other life-forms. Any part of your body that comes into contact with the outside world—your skin, mouth, nose and (especially) digestive tract—is home to bacteria, fungi and protozoa that outnumber the cells you call your own by 10, or perhaps a hundred, to one.

Their ancestors began colonizing you the moment you came into the world, inches from the least sanitary part of your mother’s body, and their descendants will have their final feast on your corpse, and join you in death. There are thousands of different species, found in combinations “as unique as our DNA or our fingerprints,” says Stanford biologist David Relman, who is investigating the complex web of interactions microbes maintain with our digestive, immune and nervous systems. Where do you leave off, and they begin? Microbes, Relman holds, are “a part of who we are.”

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