Saturday, January 11, 2003

Very topical weblog boing boing has a companion weblog called Ukelalia, a compilation of all things related to ukeleles.  I previously thought that ukelalia was a bizarre sexual fetish, but now I know better, thanks to this site. The site is subnamed "your passport to four-stringed paradise".  In addition to the daily (well, OK, occasional) entries, there is a nice set of links to uke makers, dealers, people, and general ukelele information.  In this wonderful and weird online universe, there truly is a weblog for everyone and everything. 7:15:33 PM     Strengthening ourselves Discover Magazine has published an article on "hormesis", the principle that the administration of a very small amount of a poison or toxin can actually be beneficial to a living organism.  The article discusses the implications for regulations regarding environmental discharges, clean water regulations, and the like. The issue and the discussion are quite interesting.  The author does not mention the fact that this principle is the one followed in the administration of vaccines to prevent later infection by certain viruses, and the mechanism is known in that situation: the administration of a killed virus or a small dose of a live virus can stimulate the human organism to produce its own antibodies specific to the virus in question.  It seems reasonable to think that the body can do similar things when non-living organic substances are involved as well. What the article does mention is that this principle may have some relevance to the thimerosal controversy.  In one session of the conference, veterinarian Dennis Jones, of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta, presented recent findings on low-dose mercury exposure. Jones analyzed data from a study at the Centers for Disease Control that tracked more than 100,000 infants. The infants were given thimerosal, an organic compound of mercury used as a preservative in vaccines. The researchers worried that giving the infants too many vaccines might harm them. But Jones found that limited exposure to mercury actually lessened the children's chances of developing neurological tics, delayed speech, and other pathologies. Jones's analysis is preliminary, so he declined to give concrete numbers. But he called the study "exquisite" and said that it "really amazed" him. Calabrese was not amazed. "In our most recent database search," he said softly into the microphone, "mercury is perhaps the most studied element showing a hormetic effect." See also the BELLE site, devoted to the scientific study of the Biological Effect of Low Level Exposures. 2:41:04 PM

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