[thedoc (OP)]

Stewart Green  asked the Naked Scientists:
   NS people, I just posted this on the forum also, but I think it's a good question
Shouldn't we be drinking dirty water ?

- Here's a question for NS Team or Dr Karl - I know you covered the 10 second rule and said it is bad to eat something that has been dropped on the floor cos it will covered in bacteria, but this is contradicted by a revolutionary lecture I went to at UCL by Professor Graham Rook (UCL Centre for Infectious Diseases & International Health) www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl

Basically his premise was that for 100s of 1000s of years man has evolved to drink dirty water and bacteria forming a large part of the human body, by drinking clean water over the last 2000 years we have not enough bacteria and parasites so people get more inflammation diseases like MS and even some cancers.. ?

- often it's the bodies T cells trying to fight infection and damaging the body in the process.
- Our body are mostly bacteria - so it's important not to react against them. Most are old friends : "helmiths" - if we do react against them we get elephantitis etc.

He said that in a way people with worms and gut infections are more healthy. (It's established that there are more bowel cancers in populations with less worms).

- I meant to ask him - why people is developing countries are supposed to get sick through dirty water ?

Maybe someone could get to the bottom of this.
cheers Stew Green

more blurb from the lecture below

  - Tues 28th October 2008 : Lecture : Darwin, Microbes and the Increasing Incidence of Chronic Inflammatory Diseases Professor Graham Rook (UCL Centre for Infectious Diseases & International Health) www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl

- humankind has moved rapidly from the hunter-gatherer environment to the living conditions of the rich industrialised countries. The resulting reduced exposure to certain micro-organisms has led to disordered regulation of the immune system, and contributes to rises in inflammatory diseases including cancers. This concept is an important aspect of darwinian medicine, which uses knowledge of evolution to cast light on human diseases and point to the potential exploitation of these organisms in novel treatments.

keep up the good work
What do you think?