On 02/05/2018 14:01, dennis@home wrote:
On 02/05/2018 12:35, Nightjar wrote:
On 02/05/2018 12:12, dennis@home wrote:
On 02/05/2018 09:28, Nightjar wrote:
On 01/05/2018 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 01/05/18 17:46, David wrote:
On Tue, 01 May 2018 12:23:14 +0100, Andrew wrote:

On 01/05/2018 12:22, Andrew wrote:
What an utterly dumb stupid remark to make !!.

Anyone aged 100+, was a child when antibiotics did *not* exist.

Nor did their mothers use 'anti-microbial' sprays or aerosols
full of
cleaning materials.

They were exposed to dust and pathogens from the outset and the
ones
that survived the childhood illnesses and infections and toxins
from
coal smoke have NATURAL immunity.

The worst toxins they have been exposed to are LEAD in petrol and
paint, and ASBESTOS, FAGS, and workplace chemicals like DYES.

It is people under 30 who are dying from asthma, and that is
because
GPs and 999 Call Handlers don't realise how dangerous it is.

I wonder if you will even BOTHER to mention the 11 *million*
DIESEL cars on the road, the *WORST* culprits.

Andrew Dunkerton


Oops, this was intended for Jeremy Vine. Ignore it.

Load of ******** anyway.

You appear to suggest that nobody born before 1918 had asthma.
As Wonkypedia says "citaiton needed".

Given that my late mother was born before 1918 and suffered from
chronic
asthma, so much so that in the 1950s when I was young she spent a
lot of
time in hospital, this assumption is not entirely accurate.

Farmers lung was a killer back then for thsoe in the country.

TB got you in towns

Asthamtics pretty much died from TB or bronchitis or pneumonia
before they reached puberty.

Some years ago,, a professor enlisted my help to provide equipment
for a trial he wanted to carry out to test a theory about asthma. It
didn't go ahead, because of problems funding a trial that would need
to follow the development of 1,500 neonates into adulthood.

His theory was that early exposure to diseases like TB provided
protection from asthma. Apparently, unlike many diseases that simply
produce specific antibodies, TB induces changes in the immune system
at a cellular level. That, in turn, provides life-long improvements
in resistance to disease and, he hoped, asthma. His plan was to give
neonates the BCG vaccination, to create the same effect.

You don't need to follow anyone to do a study like that. You can do
it using data collected from people now as long as you can collect
past data. Its how nearly all data on diseases is collected and
processed. It works extremely well as long as the data is fairly
accurate.

In the UK, the BCG vaccination was normally given at age 12-14. It was
not usual to give it to neonates.



And the relevance?

The study was intended to see whether giving the BCG vaccination to
neonates would affect their susceptibility to asthma in later life. At
age 12-14 the desired modification of the T cells does not occur.

As there was no identifiable population of adults who had been given the
vaccination as neonates, it was not possible to use historical data.
Hence the need for a study that followed them as they grew.

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Colin Bignell