science is neat!

if there's any credo i live by, it's that when nature speaks, we'd best listen. recently, my ear to the ground has picked up some vibrations affirming the infinite genius of biology and the impossibility of its ever being bettered by our interference. my love for self-directed ecology is a bittersweet one, in that i don't know anyone (personally) who is as moved by it as i am and thus am frequently driven to wring my hands and cry out over the desperate future of my favorite little planet, but knowing things is always good. so.

first up are two recent studies, one of which was published in the june 14 issue of the scandinavian journal of immunology, suggesting that feral rats living in sewers and basements and dumpsters and the like have far healthier immune systems than rats raised in sterile laboratory environments. an antiseptic-obsessed west says, "what?" and seth borenstein replies:

the studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. the theory, called the "hygiene hypothesis," figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.

"your immune system is like the person who lives in the perfect house and has all the food they want, you're going to start worrying about little things like someone stepping on your flowers," [co-author dr. william] parker said.

y'all are crazy, with your antibacterial soaps and bleach pens and prescriptions for every sniffle and sneeze and cough! you're friggin' crazy! i played in the mud and ate sand and kept bugs as pets and let my dog eat off my fork, i use public transportation almost exclusively, i can't remember the last time i washed my bathroom sink, and let's not even talk about the things i've been exposed to working in a veterinary hospital . . . and yet i have not been sick in, i don't even know, longer than i can remember. when i was about nineteen or twenty i developed sudden and profound pollen allergies, but when i quit smoking, about six years later, they disappeared. i am superwoman, wild rat of the urban bipedal environment, and my immune system says you can take a dump on the porch for all it cares—it ain't budging.

now, that was a little silly*, but this hygiene hypothesis is common sense from an immunology perspective. your body learns through experience, and early, consistent experience is the best kind. like any other performer, it perfects its act with practice. it also learns how to choose its battles this way. let's equate your young, germ-naïve body with a small-town, upper-middle-class, dreamily oblivious girl who grew up in a neighborhood where nobody locked their doors or followed in the car when the kids went door to door selling candy bars and cookies. when this girl graduates from school and gets her first apartment in the big city, there's a good chance that she'll be a little nervous in the beginning and will maybe blind some poor guy with pepper spray when he tries to ask her if she knows where the closest atm is. the police will recognize her address, her name, and possibly her voice from all the panicked late-night calls they'll get about strange noises in the hall and people shouting outside and car alarms going off three blocks away. her chronic hypervigilance will be a huge pain in the ass, much like your hay fever. now, if she had had a little more exposure to the real world, maybe read a newspaper once in a while, she'd have been better able to discriminate between real threats and perceived ones. and so it goes with your body; the tamest antigen is terrifying if your mother always scoured the countertops with virucide. this sort of overpurification is, of course, unwise on a grander scale, as the viruses learn through experience too, people. never doubt it; they're wily.

up next is my favorite, favorite example of the mastery of nature's big-picture thought process: there is now evidence that being the younger brother of several older brothers increases your likelihood of being gay, and that it's most likely the result of a prenatal effect, since according to the study the results only held for brothers of the same mother, not step- or half-brothers. the more older brothers you have, the more the odds are in favor of your someday having a crush on one of their friends, and the less chance there is of your going out and impregnating some female yourself. yay! yay genetics! you can tell when us crazy humans need to please, for the love of all that is right and good, stop reproducing, even when we seem incapable of figuring it out. now, it's a minimal increase compared to the rate of homosexuality overall (three percent to five percent, roughly), but every little bit counts, right? whatever it takes to slow down the explosive growth of the human population is fine by me, at least until we can manage to adequately care for all of the people who are already here.

so, in conclusion: your body is cool. especially if you're matt damon. but even if you aren't, give your cells a round of applause for being so clever and forward-thinking, and remember to give them their time at the microphone, because they've got all kinds of advice to impart, microscopic sages that they are. itsy bitsy yodas, each and every one. and if that doesn't make you drink two liters of water a day, i don't know what will.





* silly, yes, but entirely honest. i also kiss my tiny cat's perfect, miniscule toes on a daily basis. take that, toxoplasmosis; you got no game. nothin'.