From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jan 26 1999 - 15:36:28 MST
"Aliya Belgibayeva" <alika_78@hotmail.com> writes:
> Honestly, I am inclined to think that if you would put an organism into
> an absolutely sterile (which is impossible) area, this poor organism
> would have died.
I think this is wrong. I seem to recall that surgical maggots are bred
under sterile conditions, and naked mice require sterile surroundings
since they lack immune systems (well, only the T part, but anyway...).
> In order to maintain the immune system of any organism
> in order, this organism needs to be exposed to some kind of attack...
> let it be soap...ha-ha
It is not unreasonable to think that it is good to give the immune
system stimuli; one theory of the rise of allergies in Scandinavia is
that we have too few cases of parasites, making the mast cells
hypersensitive and causing allergies (the underutilized cells simply
start to hunt random antigens). This theory is not well supported,
though.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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