Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The sudden surge of a nasty parasitic disease which has infected half a dozen people in the last 3 months has been blamed on climate.
A Brain-Invading Parasite Is Believed To Be Spreading Because Of Climate Change
Rhett Jones Apr 9, 2017, 4:00pm
Health officials in Hawaii have been warning residents not to touch snails or slugs with their bare hands because of an increase in cases of people coming into contact with a rare parasitic infection known as a rat lungworm. Experts are blaming its sudden spread across the United States on climate change and globalisation.
In the last two decades, there have only been two documented cases of rat lungworm infections in Hawaii. But in the past three months, six more cases have occurred in rapid succession. Other states where it has recently popped up include California, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida. According to the Atlantic, the first known case of the disease occurred in Taiwan in 1944 but in the past few years, it’s believed to have spread to the U.S. by way of rats in cargo ships.
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The severity of the disease can vary wildly, there’s no known treatment, and it’s notoriously difficult to diagnose.
Cases of rat lungworm infections have been documented in over 30 countries and health officials are worried about its appearance in areas where previously the habitat was believed to be unsuitable. One recent surprise location was in Oklahoma. Scientists fear that this is just another consequence of climate change.
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Pretty terrifying right? The disease sounds nasty and painful, sometimes fatal, and it is currently untreatable.
But climate is not the primary cause of this problem.
The disease is described as difficult to detect, so a lot of cases in the past might have been misdiagnosed – the apparent surge in cases could simply be better diagnostics.
The referenced article in The Atlantic barely mentions climate change as a factor.
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The problem with brain parasites, as far as my knowledge allows it, is that the brain has, or supposes to have, naturally, filters that do not allow such infections to reach the brain and it’s cellular structure…..and cause damage or brain fevers….
If such parasites infect the brain it means that the brain at some point has lost the filters, maybe not entirely, and whether that is due to the parasite itself or some other prior condition, that will be very difficult to establish in any case, but the problem at that point will be very grave and life threatening…….also very complicated to asses…
No any way to connect it to climate change , as far as this goes, because it is a very complicated problem….in the first place…..with many many variables to consider…
cheers
This is always the case with these infections. A 90-year-old man comes to the hospital because of a heart attack and dies from a lung inflammation. It is always a question of the defense and the overall status of the organism. Before you can say that tropical infections are overpowering, it is advisable first to look at the number of patients and secondly, the constitution of those who get these infections. When a new-born baby is born, it must withstand many billions of bacteria that it has never noticed before, and its immune system does not know much about it. Nevertheless, when looking at the cases in which well-fed and well-kept babies get sick, very few babies become ill. They do not get pneumonia, no blood-poisoning, and usually no flu before the first year. There are, therefore, mechanisms in man which, if they are healthy, can ward off these infections. This excessive defense against infectious diseases gradually loses the baby, so that after some time it also receives illnesses against which it was previously immune. However, this happens within the framework so that it always retains as much natural defenses as its stabilizing organism needs. Therefore, many vaccination series are also unnecessary for infants. It would be necessary to administer vaccination at a later date, e.g. As a youth.
I’ve heard it referred to as the blood-brain barrier. Unlike other organs which are surrounded by blood vessels, the brain gets its blood supply from only a handful of veins and arteries in the neck. This restricted access makes it very difficult for pathogens to get up there. But when one does manage to do so, immune cells have a hard time dealing with it, because they’re restricted by the same choke point.
I’m an arborist, a “tree doctor” for my area and part of my work is to deal with insect and parasite populations. Treating infestations as a part of my work and to do this I must understand how insects live, reproduce and how they fit into the environment. Fact is that if there’s global warming then certainly insect populations will increase. But the kicker is that not only will the “bad” insects and parasites increase in number but so too will their predictors. The Warmists love to give the impression that only the baddies will increase but this is just a scare tactic, for as the globe slowly warms all populations will come to equilibrium and the malific ones will increase along side the beneficial ones.
…Invasion of Brain Eating Parasites
oh, I thought the article would be talking about Hansen, Mann, Algore, UEA etc
Hmmm – and what caused the outbreak in 1944? Lack of GW? GK
It really is a hoot to someone with some knowledge about parasitology. As an SF medic and then later as an instructor I learned a great deal about this kind of stuff. More than your average physician and a lot about the more esoteric parasitic infections and presentations around this world. About 1/4 of the earths population suffers from Ascariasis. Tens of tons of eggs of Ascaris Lumbricoides (Giant round worm) are excreted in the feces of the infected population each year with over half of that being in China. My last team sergeant that had been on deep penetration missions in N. Vietnam was in Walter Reed Hospital for two months before they properly diagnosed his problem as fascioliasis or IOW an infection by Fasciola hepatica (liver Fluke). Then there are the atypical infections and presentation such as cysts from Taenia solium (pork tape worm) in the brain. And then there is Dracunculiasis which is like something out of the movie Aliens in which the worm encysts right under the skin and cannot be extracted by surgery because it’s body fluids are highly toxic. To get rid of it you have to incise to find the one end of the worm and use a popsicle stick turned 1/2 turn every day to gradually pull it out.
And so consider that and sleep well.
Don’t forget about Naegleria fowleri and Vibrio vulnificus. (Don’t read about these if you tend to have irrational fear of anything)
The Conversation in 2013
I am glad we don’t have very many invasive species in Florida! Oh wait!
http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/nonnatives/invasive-species/
In your link I didn’t see any mention of “Snow Birds”. 😎
A far more serious invasion is the “Spring Breakers”.
Rat lung worm is a problem on the island of Hawaii, and there have been more than 2 cases in the last decade. Symptoms range from nil to death depending on how many oocytes ingested and where they happen to wander. I don’t eat raw local greens, especially curly kale. Our catchment water is treated with chlorine, UV and filtered, and we bait slugs, snails, and rats. The oocytes are very tuff to kill so just washing your greens isn’t safe. Doesn’t have anything to do with climate change- it’s more the popularity of organic kale smoothies. Tomatoes and cucumbers make a fine salad. Aloha!
So do cucumbers and thinly sliced onions marinated in vinegar.
Unless they can show from medical records an outbreak in 1934 (the hottest year in the Lower 58 states) I’m calling #FakeMedicine
I think there’s a definitive link to climate change. Just look at folks like Nye and Mann. If their brains aren’t infected with rat lung worm, they’re infected with something else!
“Climate Will Cause an Invasion of Brain Eating Parasites”
I thought it already had.
Beat me to it – you might even call it an epidemic infestation.
Of course, since they seem to be feeding only on the Progressive eco-left, you’d think they’d starve to death.
Of course, there’s a LOT of those eco-types out there, so it could take a while.
Even when it isn’t changing, climate change causes everything.
Of course the dramatic change in the climate in the last 3 months caused this!
The true parasites are those who get subsidies for promoting a fake science