The Tapeworm Diet: How Do I Sign Up?

The first step towards an effective diet is to learn some basic arithmetic. Not only will this launch you towards being a calorie controlled geek but is also great for querying restaurant bills. Sadly, it won't get you onto any chat shows as stating the blindingly obvious is reserved for professors of philosophy. Designing something that is more repulsive than a king size happy meal is the way to go.

Now, people have tapeworms removed after experiencing third world farming techniques or forgetting that meat is best served cooked. The normal experience is one of revulsion, rather like finding a nest of rats have been living under your bed. The Tapeworm Diet seeks to rehabilitate this loathed parasite by turning it into your personal pet.

The idea is fairly simple. Ingest the cysts of a tapeworm, provide five-star luxury accommodation for your pet parasite and it will feed on all those excess calories you shovel into your mouth. It will soon resemble one of those unwelcome guests who raids your fridge of your favourite snacks and then waits for you to restock. Although you will be fooling yourself and the rest of the world that you are eating as much as usual you will actually be slowly starving yourself. As your pet tapeworm makes itself at home and stretches out to fill your intestine you will lose weight, but you will also be losing a lot of essential nutrients. Your live-in parasite eats indiscriminately and will devour your vintage wine and gourmet meals as well as all the junk food. Your body will be deprived of vitamins and minerals and will eventually show signs of malnutrition.

Once your guest has outstayed its welcome you can evict it with a simple oral pill. You are now free to carry on eating as before and start to balloon again! This is surely the ultimate irony of the Tapeworm Diet: as it isn't really a diet and you have done nothing to change your eating habits you are sure to carry on eating for two even though you now have only one mouth to feed.

If the idea of having a pet parasite still freaks you out, there are also tapeworm diet pills available to the more credulous and scientifically illiterate. In a culture where popping pills has become a reflex action, this seems the obvious solution. However, few living things do very much eating once they're dead and this applies to parasites too. Whatever is in such pills is more likely to stick in your throat for being dumb enough to have bought them rather than stick to your gut. However, Megaslim, a product consisting of tapeworm eggs kept in a gelatine solution seemed to have got the miraculous approval of the FDA only to find that Fly By Night Inc's flagship product is now nowhere to be found. The solution to this paradox may lie in the fact that The MQ is a (sometimes) satirical student magazine.

So you're back to contemplating having a 20 foot tapeworm living in your gut as the ultimate slim-as-you-eat accessory. There is one slight problem: feeding people tapeworms is illegal in most countries. Even taking one for a drive is frowned upon by the FDA, or your local guardian of food safety and friend of the pharmacology lobby. I have found one company that has a suitably named Tapeworm Diet website. They have a reservoir in Africa (where else?) and a clinic in Mexico. You could, of course, venture out on your own parasite-seeking tour but note that not all tapeworms are friendly. This therapy uses the beef tapeworm (T. saginata) and avoids the malevolent porcine variety (T. solium). One slight problem is that the pork tapeworm can be found within cattle and you're unlikely to be in a situation to interview your prospective dining mate and distinguish the two.

Another website, Worm Therapy, has an interesting theory. As societies become more affluent they seem to suffer from more autoimmune problems such as allergies whilst at the same time showing a sharp drop in cases of tapeworms. This is brought into sharp relief in those countries with a small newly-wealthy elite surrounded by peasants in medieval poverty. A correlation does not prove causation, but as our digestive system already hosts whole colonies of parasites and bacteria are we being unfair on the poor tapeworm just for being so darn ugly?

Back to fat. Back to that calorie calculator. As tapeworms cannot be patented, I figure we'll just wait 10 years for the pharmacos to figure out what's going on and sell you a pill instead. In the meantime, you could contemplate that trip to Mexico - the cost of the treatment alone should save you a ton of calories.

Risks of Buying Erectile Dysfunction Treatments Online

The US FDA has a long article on "Hidden Risks of Erectile Dysfunction "Treatments" Sold Online". Many consumers perceive these products as safe because they appear to be properly labelled and promoted as all-natural alternatives to prescription drugs. However, FDA testing has revealed that some of these products actually contain sildenafil or vardenafil - the active ingredients in Viagra and Levitra respectively.

There are a few issues here. The FDA has a vested interest in protecting the pharmaceutical industry so they will do whatever they can to trash competing products. To pretend that Viagra, and similar products, are used purely for medical purposes and not as a recreational drug is to live in a fantasy world. People who have had their online Viagra purchases confiscated will look for alternatives. Keeping prices high by maintaining a monopoly only hits those people who live in the USA. So one "risk" of buying online medicines is that they will be confiscated by customs.

Having said that, there are people for whom taking Viagra can have serious unwanted side-effects and therefore they should inform themselves of what the real ingredients are in these alternative treatments. People with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease are often prescribed drugs containing nitrates, and men with these conditions commonly suffer from erectile dysfunction, but unfortunately sildenafil interacts with these drugs in a way that could potentially lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.

The article includes a long list of products that the FDA considers undesirable within the US market. The lesson here is that whenever buying anything online just do a bit of due diligence and background checks through search engines and forums. You may not believe everything the FDA says but be aware of what exactly it is that you're going to put in your body.

WHO Insists "Concern over flu pandemic justified"

The Director-General of the World unHealth Organization gave a speech to the World Health Assembly in Geneva today. The lengthy speech was designed to show the world that the WHO is trying to level the delivery of healthcare in spite of a wide gulf in the resources of countries.

If there is a disease that would warrant the term 'pandemic' then that is surely HIV/AIDS, and yet that is mentioned as a mere epidemic. There is enough evidence to show that HIV was also manufactured, but the DG was obviously silent on this.

One section caught my eye, however:

"For five long years, outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in poultry, and sporadic frequently fatal cases in humans, have conditioned the world to expect an influenza pandemic, and a highly lethal one. As a result of these long years of conditioning, the world is better prepared, and very scared."

Pavlov is still alive and in the service of medicine. Perhaps Dr Margaret Chan is unaware of how "very scared" people on the net are and that the "conditioning" is not really working very well.

The southern hemisphere is entering its flu vaccine season, but we shall probably have to wait for the north to cool down before the swine flu vaccine gets smuggled into the annual jab.

Draft National Institutes of Health Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research - First Comments

The National Institutes of Health has just released its draft guidelines on future stem cell research in the USA. It is also seeking public debate on these guidelines with a view to establishing firm guidelines for funding bodies giving grants to stem cell researchers.

Here is what seems to be the crucial conclusions of the current stem cell research draft guidelines:

"These draft Guidelines would allow funding for research using only those human embryonic stem cells that were derived from embryos created by in vitro fertilization (IVF) for reproductive purposes and were no longer needed for that purpose. Funding will continue to be allowed for human stem cell research using adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. Specifically, these Guidelines describe the conditions and informed consent procedures that would have been required during the derivation of human embryonic stem cells for research using these cells to be funded by the NIH. NIH funding for research using human embryonic stem cells derived from other sources, including somatic cell nuclear transfer, parthenogenesis, and/or IVF embryos created for research purposes, is not allowed under these Guidelines."

On first reading, the NIH has tried to placate both the research community and the largely Christian right-wing anti embryonic stem cell research lobby. After all, the arguments are largely about embryonic stem cells but here we find that essentially the same embryonic stem cells from two different IVF sources are treated in two different ways. There seems no logic as to why spare embryos from an IVF clinic should be treated differently to an IVF embryo created specifically for research purposes. It also opens up a way around the proposed legislation by encouraging IVF so as to harvest the resulting embryos rather than primarily for fertility reasons. Shoddy piece of logic and, from what I've seen so far, both sides are up in arms.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research NIH Guidelines Released and Public Opinions Wanted

Stem cell researchers seemed happy when President Obama lifted Bush's ban on certain types of research. However, what Obama did was to instruct the National Institutes for Health to set up stem cell research guidelines. Those guidelines have now been published and there is only a 14-day period to solicit public responses. However, the guidelines are far more conservative than some had hoped, and opponents of the research are systematically flooding the comment process. You too can join in!

here you can find the open letter from the ESCR plus all other relevant links.

Is Hand-Shaking Old-Fashioned and Unhygienic?

Michael Arrington has a problem: he hates shaking hands when meeting people. Why he should choose to air this on TechCrunch has baffled most commenters. What Arrington really hates is the idea of catching a disease off some sweaty palm. He frequently has to excuse himself and go to the nearest toilet to wash his hands. This sounds like he's morphing into Howard Hughes and he should see someone about this (without shaking hands).

However, he has tried to turn a personal obsessive-compulsive disorder into a mini-crusade against the whole cultural proclivity for shaking hands. His idea of promoting 'fist bumps' is puerile, potentially painful and still includes skin contact. He has even posted a second article claiming partial victory as one company claims to have held a board meeting without shaking hands - irritatingly they engaged in a round of... yes, fist bumps!

Thing is, not everyone in the world engages in hand-shaking as a form of greeting. Here in Thailand people 'wai' to each other; hands held together as if in prayer and with a slight nod of the head. If you're carrying something then the equivalent one-hand-clapping gesture is acceptable, and amongst friends often a simple nod is sufficient. In Japan people greet each other with a simple bow, although this can become exaggerated if there is a huge difference in social standing.

Anyway, the point is that hand-shaking is not universal. Should we dispense with it and accept a nod or a bow of recognition as sufficient greeting etiquette? Are there any other ways that humans greet each other?

As for Arrington, he could go down the politician's route of using Prevex hand-cream to form a protective chemical barrier against unwanted germs.

A Child's Severed Finger Will Amazingly Grow Back Spontaneously

It is fairly common knowledge that certain reptiles, such as the salamander, are able to regrow severed limbs. Such an ability has always been though impossible in mammals, including humans. But pioneering research by Robert O. Becker has shown that such an ability to regenerate limbs does exist in humans, albeit to a limited extent.

One of the most common reasons for children being admitted to hospital is the loss of a finger from some accident such as being wedged in a car door or sliced off by a fan. The standard technique is to just stitch some skin over the wound or, if the tip of the finger is still available, to rebuild the finger using microsurgery. Neither method results in a fully-functioning finger.

However, by pure accident Cynthia Illingworth at the Sheffield Children's Hospital noticed that in some children the finger would grow back. Just by doing nothing and letting the body heal itself, by 1974 Illingworth had documented hundreds of cases of regenerated fingers in children.

The criteria for this to happen are that just the tip of the finger be lost – the region from the fingernail down to the very first joint – and that the child be under eleven years of age. If the finger is sliced below the first joint then regeneration does not take place. If the skin is stitched back over the cut the finger will also not grow back. Also, the younger the child the quicker is the regrowth.

A small number of physicians took up this technique but further research was not funded. The term 'stem cell' is now in common use and this regeneration is the amazing ability of cells to not only differentiate from being a stem cell to one specific type, such as bone or cartilage or blood, but the ability for some cells to dedifferentiate from a specific type back into stem cells and then transform themselves into a different cell type. In the 1970's this was considered heretical, but even today the non-invasive techniques pioneered by Becker have been left to rot.

The Body Electric is a great book about what it is like to be a real scientist in pursuit of knowledge to help humanity. The grand thesis is that we are not just flesh and bones but also a complex and subtle electromagnetic system. The regeneration of a child's fingertip was proof that humans and salamanders had some common mechanisms. Becker was able to heal severely broken bones that would not heal naturally by the simple stimulation with a very low electric current. He was also able to destroy bacterial infections without antibiotics using similar methods. Read the book – it is eye-opening stuff.

Such simple yet powerful techniques should by now be in widespread use. Sadly they are not. We can all speculate on what vested interests are served by using complex surgery and pharmaceuticals instead of gently stimulating the body electric.

Can I Catch Swine Flu From Eating Parma Ham or Salami?

In the grip of this virulent news meme known as swine flu there are some serious dietary questions that need to be considered.

Can I catch swine flu from eating pork products?

Not if you cook them properly, all the way through. The virus is destroyed above 160 F (85 C) so that even boiling it will kill any virus or bacteria that had made a comfortable home lodged in the flesh. The US Center for Disease Control is disingenuous here, firstly flatly stating that one cannot catch swine flu from any pork product, then covering its back saying best to cook it.

Can I catch swine flu from eating cured pork products like Parma ham and salami?

Good question; so much so that the Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma (Parma Ham Consortium) had to issue a public statement reassuring consumers that Parma ham was absolutely safe to eat. You can read it here, if you can read Italian.

The press release gave three reasons why their ham is safe to eat. Firstly, there is no research linking the swine flu virus with transmission through eating pork. True, but see the previous advice. Secondly, the designation "Parma Ham" - or more accurately "Prosciutto di Parma" - is a protected name with many rules and regulations regarding quality control, including the source of the pigs themselves. So, trust us, our pigs are healthy and safe to eat! However, the best reason is saved till last: that the curing process destroys any viruses that may have been present. Parma ham is cured for at least 12 months and from research done viruses die in such an environment after 3 to 6 months. Again, no research has been done on this particular swine flu virus.

So in some respects this is good news for Parma as it trumpets its own superior quality. As to other cured meats just make sure they've been cured for at least 6 months to be safe. Cooking Parma ham is a sheer waste of an expensive delicacy but one can quickly fry salami - slam in a couple of eggs and I've been told it's a popular breakfast in Mexico, of all places! Any product that is on the shelves at the moment is going to have been produced months if not years ago so is almost certainly safe. With regards to any pork product made by Smithfield Foods... erm... the decision is entirely yours!

Just hoping the price of Parma ham drops during this period.

Best Surgery Videos on YouTube (not in the least bit gory... honestly!)

Who needs medical school any more? You can now watch the world's surgeons do their thing from the comfort of your laptop.

From open-heart surgery to amputations, sex-change operations to autopsies, the operating rooms of the world have gone online. One website, OR-Live, regularly broadcasts live from the O.R. For example, tune in next week to watch a hysterectomy. These broadcasts, and dozens of other videos posted to YouTube, draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. We've got four words for you: advertising-supported health care.

For your voyeuristic pleasure, Wired has compiled what they bill as the "10 Gory Surgical triumphs on YouTube". They also go out of their way to forewarn the viewer that "some of these are grisly, and all of them are graphic." This is after all, surgery we're talking about, not a visit to the physio (which can also be grisly), so why the melodrama? Did any Wired writers faint on the job? It's humans on display - we're allowed to ooze on an operating table stuff we wouldn't be proud of in public.

Having said that I'm sure the one everybody wants to watch is the sex-change operation, so why should I disappoint...