Category: learning curve

Coincidental killers

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This piece by Ed Yong in aeon magazine is beautifully written and will make you think about how we, as humans, view our world in an arrogantly anthropocentric manner.

Humans tend to believe that the bacteria that cause us illness and disease do so because that is their sole aim in life. But actually, that’s not how it works. Ed rightly points out that the mechanisms these “germs” employ in order to infect us are actually the results of a process of evolutionary coincidence, rather than any specific design to aid their selection of Homo sapiens as a target organism.

The adaptations that allow bacteria, fungi and other pathogens to cause us harm can easily evolve outside the context of human disease. They are part of a microbial narrative that affects us, and can even kill us, but that isn’t about us. This concept is known as the coincidental evolution hypothesis or, as the Emory University microbiologist Bruce Levin described it in 2008, the ‘shit happens’ hypothesis.

Yes, that fact that these bugs can cause us infection actually has nothing to do with them actually causing us infection. It’s simply that evolution has coincidentally given them the tools to infect us. Take humans out of the equation completely, and these bacteria would remain the same genetically; it’s not we that are influencing them, it’s just our anthropocentric thinking that makes us believe we must be the driving force at play.

Its virulence – its ability to cause disease – is not an adaptation against its host. It is a side effect, a fluke. It kills through coincidence.

This theory also extends to antibiotic resistance. It’s important to remember that most antibiotics were not invented, rather they were discovered. And microorganisms have been using them against each other for hundreds of thousands of years already. The genes which allow bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics aren’t anything new. They’ve been there all along. Our overuse of the drugs is merely propagating the (more rapid) spread of these genes, something which is going to cause us all sorts of problems in the very near future.

In fact, most bacteria wouldn’t even notice if we weren’t around. They’d get on with their daily lives, simply interacting with everything and anything around them:

The most important parts of a microbe’s world are, after all, other microbes. They’ve been dealing with each other for billions of years before we came along.

So actually, we’d do well to note that we’re nowhere near as important as we might imagine.
As Ed says:

We’re not central actors in the dramas that affect our lives. We’re not even bit players. We are just passers-by, walking outside the theatre and getting hit by flying props.

Indeed.

Minority Sports Night

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Last night, I ended up watching a whole evening-ful of minority sports, quite by accident. I’m not sure I could watch any of them for any longer period of time, but it was different enough to entertain me for a once off. In case you want to try something similar, here’s my guide to what I saw and what I thought.

You will need: Some red wine, a couch and some minority sports.

It started accidentally with the second half of some women’s World Cup hockey. New Zealand’s Black Sticks (you’d never get away with that here) versus hosts and world number one team in hitting a ball with an inverted walking stick, the Netherlands. Given that I was making bacon sandwiches before I started flicking through the channels, I missed the first half and with it, the only goals of the game. But it was fairly entertaining still, with New Zealand giving it a bit of a go and some exciting counter-attacking by the ladies in orange.
The rules are a bit difficult to work out if you are watching it for the first time and the commentators were – reasonably enough – assuming that the viewers had watched some hockey before. I have, but it was on ice and the players were bigger and wore more padding. So I was a little confused from time to time, but I gathered that the aim was either to score goals (obviously) or to hit the ball at your opponents’ legs (less obvious). If you manage the latter, you get a free hit of the ball, at which point you either to score a goal (obviously) or to hit the ball at your opponents’ legs (now more obvious).

Final score 2-0 to the Netherlands.

Over then (accidentally again) to the EFC fight between Cape Town’s Don “The Magic Man” Madge and Joburg’s Boyd “I’ve Got No Nickname” Allen. It was at the Grand West Arena and I’m guessing that Parow was completely empty last night.

Crickets. Tumbleweeds. A solitary tolling bell, perhaps.

Again, I don’t know a lot about EFCing, but apparently, this was a big fight and there were a number of EFCing people who were talking it up beforehand. Of course, they would do that. No self respecting sports channel sticks up soundbites of experts saying stuff like:

No mate – this is going to be rubbish. Save your time and go and do the washing up instead. Yeah, I know there’s a lot of it and the kitchen is freezing, but believe me, you’ll die of boredom if you sit down and watch this. Save yourself: go and soak that bacon pan.

Now, my experience is also that these things can be over-hyped in the extreme, but given that there was only the washing up to do and the kitchen was wholly unheated, I decided to sit through it.

What followed was rather incredible. Two guys, very evenly matched in every single statistic, both 70kg of pure muscle, kicked seven bells out of each other with amazing power, energy and determination for 25 minutes. I don’t mind telling you that I was transfixed. I even missed all the sponsors’ names. You know, the one who sponsored the fighters’ gloves, their shorts, their walk into the ring (sorry – “the hexagon” – as if a boxing “ring” isn’t actually “a square”), the actual sponsors of “the hexagon”, the company that sponsored the replays, the company that sponsored the company that sponsored the replays, the company that sponsored the ring girls (OMG – no-one tell the feminists!), the company that sponsored the energy drinks in the break between rounds, the one that sponsored the third LED globe from the left on the overhead lighting gantry and, of course, the betting company that sponsored the whole fight… so – you know – go and bet. Or something.

The aim of EFCing is to hurt your opponent as much as possible, but you’re not allowed to hit a hockey ball into their legs. However, you can just hit them or kick them, or shoot them (can we check that last one is right before publishing, please? – Ed.).

The fight went the distance, amazingly, with one guy having a big cut on his head and the other nursing a bloodied nose (who knew?) and was then declared as a draw, which seemed fair enough. However, by all accounts, including the breathless and sycophantic wonderment of commentator Sias du Plessis, I feel that I may have inadvertently ruined my future watching of EFC by starting with the best fight ever. This tweet, from regular commenter, biobot, summed it up nicely:

Looks like it’s all downhill from here.

Final score: A draw.

I avoided the (heavily sponsored) post-event press conference and switched onto the Isle of Man TT Races.

My links with the Isle of Man mean that I usually watch the TT for the flashing glimpses of scenery, rather than the actual motorbike racing. And to be fair, while I have a passing interest in the zoomy bikes and the nutters who sit on them, this was pretty much the case this time around too. It’s a difficult thing to watch in any other way, given that the course is nearly 38 miles long and there are only so many cameras to go around, so a lot of the incident, such as it is, happens away from where you’re actually looking.

Technology though, is making a bit of a impact, as you can now stick smaller, better cameras in more places – namely on helicopters and on the actual bikes. The latter works better, as the bikes now go so fast that the helicopters can struggle to keep up with them. That said, there’s still an awful lot you (sometimes thankfully) don’t get to see, like the fatal accident of Sheffield rider Karl Harris during the race I was watching.

The commentary is great, with just enough information to let you know what’s going on, but not so much that it drowns out the noise of bikes. It’s presented with good humour by ex-riders too, so it’s down to earth, honest and insightful. And behind it all, there’s still the glorious Isle of Man scenery in HD. There’s more TT programming on Supersport tonight and over the weekend, so delve in and have a look at my beautiful island.

Final score: Michael Dunlop won. Again.

None of these things will ever come close to replacing football in my list of great sports I like to watch, but I actually enjoyed a quick trip outside my sporting comfort zone last night, and I’ll certainly be giving it a go again soon – I believe there’s some international egg-chasing this weekend, so I might give that a go.

Best pets for causing chronic inflammatory eye disease

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Having successfully answered the tricky conundrum of which foodstuff is most likely to result in penetration of the oral mucosa by parasite-like sperm bags (spoiler alert: it’s squid), it’s traditionally about this time of year that the question of which pets are best at causing chronic inflammatory eye disease always crops up and, to be honest, previously, we here at 6000 miles… have occasionally struggled to give you a definitive answer.

Not so this year though, thanks to the efforts of Blaikie et al. in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Yes, we’ve drafted in the big names of Scottish Opthalmology and they’ve told us that if it’s chronic inflammatory eye disease you’re after (with the potential added benefits of reduced visual acuity and raised intraocular pressure, multiple foci of inflammation at all levels within the globe, corneal granulomas, iritis, peripheral anterior synechiae, cataract, vitritis, and chorioretinitis), then you’ll be wanting to get a tarantula.

I know, I know. Many of you will be disputing these findings, probably suggesting instead that the obvious choice would be a porcupine. But with a porcupine, aside obviously from a lot of love and affection, you’re really only going to get the dangers of acute ocular trauma, with none of the awkward side-effects of ongoing discomfort and requirement for long-term systemic steroid use. Not so with your average tarantula – especially if you’re going to grab the bull by the metaphorical horns and plump for the Chilean Rose (Grammastola cala) tarantula, everyone’s favourite choice when hoping for devastating ocular inflammation. Beginners may want to start with the Thailand Black (Haplopelma minax) tarantula though, just to see if agonising keratoconjunctivitis is for them.

It’s the hairs, see? Tiny little hairs from the back of your furry friend that get onto your hand and from there, get into your eye – note the singular form here: most patients presented with far worse problems in one eye, always on the side of their dominant hand – and then irritate the hell out of you for several years (and counting) afterwards.

It was also interesting to note that of the three case studies presented in the paper:

Initially a similar clinical picture was seen in the three patients.  The main findings were of multiple fine intracorneal hairs with an associated keratoconjunctivitis. Two patients associated the onset of symptoms with the handling of a tarantula, and the third case was recognised only by astute history taking.

Which is basically like the doctors asking:

We’ve found some tiny little hairs in your eye, and that’s what seems to be causing your problems. We’re not sure where they’ve come from though. Have you been handling anything with tiny little hairs on prior to the onset of your symptoms?

And two of the patients saying:

Of course. Yes. I was handling a tarantula spider. They must have come from there.

And the third going:

Nope. Nothing springs to mind.
I mean, there’s my porcupine, but obviously I’m always really careful around him.
Tiny little hairs… tiny little hairs… I really can’t think what it could possibly be.
Tiny little hairs… No. Sorry. I’ve got nothing.
Maybe my girlfriend might be able to think of something? I’ll give her a call. I hope she hears her phone. Sometimes she doesn’t hear it when it’s in her handbag. You know how it is, haha. Yeah no, she was popping out to Spiders R Us to get some food in for our forty-seven tarantulas.

What?

So yes, if you’re thinking of getting a pet for the little ones, maybe steer clear of the tarantula route (I’d also probably not recommend a porcupine either), because even though the Chilean Rose is “the most popular and widely available spider on the market because of their hardiness, docility, and apparently harmless, non-venomous nature”, they will possibly, inadvertently, try to blind you.
If you must (and how “must” would be the case, I really don’t know, save perhaps from Oregon’s Mandatory Arachnid Ownership Programme) get a tarantula as a pet, then the authors advise that you:

…wear gloves, avoid rubbing the eyes during handling, and thoroughly wash your hands after handling to minimise the transfer of hairs.

Safety first, eh?

The doctor will see you now. Which is more than you’ll be able to do with him.

Here’s a lovely article on why WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS SOON

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Herewith the second of the things I saw on The Telegraph website this morning (this being the first), albeit that this one appears to have been around for a short while. It’s all about antibiotic resistance.

The microbiologist in me has been telling you for a long time that we’re about to run out of useful antibiotics and that we’re all doomed buggered. Well, here’s a nice little project from The Telegraph which sums up whole miserable situation up quite nicely. It doesn’t condescendingly spoon-feed the information, but rather, it’s nicely aimed at engaging with an audience which it presumes is interested and intelligent. Yes. I mean you guys.

There are expert quotes:

“We risk going into a post-antibiotic era, and that could start any time in the next 10 or 20 years, when modern medicine becomes impossible. Routine surgical procedures – hip replacements, caesarean sections, modern cancer treatments – all are based on using antibiotics to prevent or treat infections. Without them, people will die.”

…some lovely soundbites:

Sir Alexander Fleming did warn us. During a speech in Stockholm in 1945 after accepting his Nobel Prize, Fleming sounded “one note of warning” over bacteria becoming resistant through inappropriate use of the drug. “The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops.” he said. The idea of his precious discovery being stockpiled by online pharmacies, used to fatten up our fish and livestock, dumped in rivers and sprayed over fields, would have baffled and horrified him in equal measure.

…and a superb interactive graph showing how long it took for our bacterial foes to become resistant to each and every antibiotic from Penicillin (13 years) to Macrolides (a couple of months).

It even mentions Dr Ajit Lalvani, with whom I used to play football every Thursday evening in Oxford (decent, if unenergetic midfield general; good at pointing a lot, in case you were wondering), so it must be good.

If you have a few minutes spare, and you want to read how utterly doomed we all are (because who doesn’t?) and how you can do pretty much nothing about it, go and give it a read.