by liberal japonicus
Probably more of an open thread topic (but all my posts are basically open threads), but by way of introduction, I love the observation that zombies are a boy thing, vampires are a girl thing because, like every good joke, there is an uncomfortable observation at the heart of it. Boys like zombies because, when you are in a zombie apocalypse, questions of survival trump questions of committment. On the other hand, 'till death do us part' takes on a whole new level when you are part of the undead.
When we toss in the concept of free will, things get really interesting. While the etiology of zombies is a little more fluid than vampires, I think vampires have it all over zombies in terms of free will. Compelled by the blood lust but fighting it is a lot more appealing romantically than must eat brains, will eat brains.
That's a roundabout way to introduce cats and this article to the mix.
Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.
The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDSepidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.
But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”
a bit more below the fold, with an autoplay video.
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