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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: A.J. Mullen who wrote (33268)	12/29/2009 7:52:56 PM
From: A.J. Mullen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 52153

While I'm on folk-remedies, I heard a fascinating piece on NPR today. It centered on a man who suffered from very bad allergies. While he was on vacation in England, his aunt asked him if he had seen a BBC documentary on parasites which had noted that hookworms inhibit the human immune system. The NPR program noted an argument that we have co-evolved with parasites, and, having suppressed them recently, our immune system is now hypersensitive. This man hadn't seen the program, but word of it sent him to the internet. He decided he wanted to infect himself. He tried writing to researchers and lab suppliers. Finally he went to Cameroon in West Africa and visited latrines, barefooted. (The worms borrow into the skin and make their way to the gut where they settle in,) He returned to the US. A few weeks later his allergies cleared up. He now has a small business, selling the hookworms he collects from his own faeces after rinsing and cleaning. He claims to have sent, I think, eighty-odd people (No pun intended). He says he's amazed he isn't mobbed by sufferers of everything from allergies to Crone's Disease and MS. Ashley