Want healthy kids? Get 'em some worms!

[Chuck(G)]

I've always wondered if this business with hypo-allergenic everything and houses so clean that white is a viable color scheme is good for us.

Here's the conventional wisdom: Pets promote allergy, kids shouldn't eat peanuts until they're at least 3, and intestinal worms are nothing more than an icky reminder of life before flush toilets.

Here's the new wisdom: Early exposure to pets, peanuts and intestinal worms might actually be good for you, because they program the developing immune system to know the difference between real threats, such as germs, and Aunt Millie's cat.

http://tinyurl.com/hxlg2

[Dan Schultz]

Yea... I think this is probably a correct statement. Modern civilization is propagating all sorts of illnesses and genetic problems because medicine has the ability to save many who would have formerly died at a very early age. There surely was a point in early time when a poor sap who was born with very poor vision simply died because he could not hunt.

[Chuck(G)]

I'd love to know of someone who actually got sick and died because he picked up and ate a piece of food that had fallen on the floor. Just brush off the cat hair--that gets caught in your teeth...

[LoyalTubist]

My older daughter lost her natural resistance to bacteria from that antibacterial stuff. She still has to be careful about what kind of soap she uses, even though she now almost 20. She won't use anything besides Ivory soap to wash herself.