North Korean defector found to have 'enormous parasites' | Hacker News Reader

North Korean defector found to have 'enormous parasites'

bbc.com

43 pointsfarseer55 comments

> Nine charts which tell you all you need to know about North Korea

You won't believe number 6!

What on earth happened to the BBC?

Someone saw buzzfeed and went "me too!"

Don't get me started. The BBC used to be a flagship for balanced, meaningful and insightful news. I've been reading the BBC news website for at least 15 years.

In the last couple of years I've noticed a stark movement towards clickbait titles and imagery and a movement away from emphasis on balanced news reporting.

Looking now, the home page is in fact littered with click bait titles:

- The degrees that make you rich... and the ones that don't

- How one abuse victim found foster help for her dog Dusty

- The deadly problem with US fraternities

- What you may not have realised about acid attacks

Back in the day, that first headline would have been something much more specific. For example "Computer, maths and science degrees lead to highest paid jobs".

Sadly, I guess just reporting the facts does not bring the visitors, which is a shame.

> In the last couple of years I've noticed a stark movement towards clickbait titles

I have too (have been reading bbc for past 5 years). Do you have any recommendations for what to read instead?

To be honest I don't think anybody should rely on one single source of the truth for their news. The ideal scenario is that you take your news from a couple of sources, and come to your own conclusions.

Sources I use for news in no particular order:

- Reuters

- Al-Jazeera

- Russia Today

- The Guardian

- Reddit - although admittedly this is less for the news itself and more for the commentary that inevitably follows in various news sub Reddits

Just as I was giving up on the BBC, they published this incredibly in-depth article by star journalist Jim Muir that bought them a reprieve in my books: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35695648

I don’t know if the BBC has ever published anything that even-handed, in-depth, thorough, and expansive prior.

"The BBC used to be a flagship for balanced, meaningful and insightful news."

Take a look at Deutsche Welle.[1][2] It has impressed me with its high quality, relatively in-depth reporting, and very little clickbait. I only wish it had more international coverage.

[1] - http://www.dw.com/

[2] - http://rss.dw.com/rdf/rss-en-all

They now see themselves as a competitor to commercial media and entertainment networks - not sure why other than to justify the very high salaries of their so-called 'talent'?

Other public broadcast RTV (radio & television) such as the Dutch NOS also suffer from this. My theory is: its the intense pressure from the commercial broadcast, as well as the Internet as a whole. It makes public broadcast RTV less relevant, and as the elder pass away they're trying to cater to youth to remain relevant in the longer run. Youth like e.g. clickbait. Clickbait also generates pageviews hence ads or at least statistics showing relevance. Of course, those statistics are manipulated by short-term benefits.

Tapeworm and other parasites are fascinating things.

One of the most interesting cases was when Laurent Fignon, at the height of his powers in 1988 withdrew from the Tour de France (which he'd won in 1984, and would just lose in 1989).

The pundits at first blamed Fignon’s problem on a return of the hypoglycemia that had plagued him in the past but, after the eighth stage in Nancy, he suddenly discovered the real cause of his fatigue when his trainer pulled six feet of a tapeworm out of him.[1]

SIX FEET OF TAPEWORM!

[1] http://www.bikeraceinfo.com/riderhistories/laurent-fignon.ht...

For metric units users:

6 ft ≈ 1.8 m

27 cm long. Not exactly what I would call enormous, (in this context!). I bet that the journalist never had seen a cetacean's worm.

Title was shortened for some reason. Original quote from the doctor is "enormous number of parasites ".

Understood, thanks. This makes much more sense.

Associate disgust with North Koreans. Check.

Motivate military invasion as humanitarian intervention. Check.

Yes, this will be Iraq war, Part II

Iraq. Part IV.

Because obv the BBC are just a mouthpiece for the Trump administration...

Because obviously it wasn't so to prepare for the war in Iraq? I suggest reading the articles from 2003, I think a lot of them are still online.

Is the UK signing up for a war with NK?

Regardless of how bad Trump is considered to be, and how true that will turn out to be, in my opinion this is the first time that someone is actually doing something that has a chance at ending this horrible situation that we've been just sweeping under the rug for the past few decades. He put a squeeze on their only ally, China, put in meaningful sanctions that are hitting where it hurts, the elite, and is calling out their leader on his bluffing tactics that worked well (for the leader and the elite) so far.

Hundreds of thousands of people, slowly languishing in famine and unspeakable suffering, all ignored because it's an 'inconvenient problem'.

It's easy for Trump to talk, as he always does, when he doesn't face the threats that Asia does. There has always been a hard stance on NK.

> There has always been a hard stance on NK

Can you justify that opinion? Why did it take the US to sanction a Chinese bank?

The hard stance you speak of was always simple containment and ignoring, and then when their leader would start shaking sabres and making threats, he would get appeased with free food.

That was exactly my point. The problem was ignored, and at times when it couldn't be ignored, NK would bluff, and the rest of the world would appease them.

The BBC are obsessed with Trump in a way that is 180 degrees opposite of what you are suggesting.

Not really, I omitted an explicit </s> because I though the ellipsis made it obvious...

But then, I'm English so maybe I'm assume more familiarity with the BBC than the average HNer.

My error

Well, then it de-escalated pretty quickly from nuclear weapons to parasites. I find it unlikely, even as a side-story to the main propaganda.

I always appreciate a cynical take on the news, but to be fair there has been plenty of justification for humanitarian intervention in NK for the past 60 years. We don't really need more 'reasons'.

This is more like titillation wrapped-up in a respectable jacket of 'serious current affairs' to get some clicks.

Go to Africa then, you have a lot of market there.

There's the question of what humanitarian aid Western nations might be morally obligated to offer to its former colonies. That's one question, with many different opinions.

Then there's the question of how history will view the rest of us for looking the other way while the Kims turned an entire country into a concentration camp.

That's another question entirely. Imagine if we'd left Auschwitz up and running at the end of WWII.

Happened to Buchenwald. Was a nice KZ for the Russians.

60 years? North Korea used to be more industrialized and further along than the south at the beginning.

Why does this get downvoted? It is factually 100% correct. People used to flee from South to North in the beginning.

From the HN guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

What's reason got to do with it? This kind of piece is literally about the visceral level.

> to be fair there has been plenty of justification for humanitarian intervention in NK for the past 60 years

Broadly agree to that. Amazing that we're finally opening our eyes to that at this particular point in history, isn't it.

...and while you are at it, there are plenty of other countries that could use some humanitarian intervention. Some of them even US allies (keywords: Saudi Arabia, Yemen)

But to be fair, I have no answer to the question if ignoring abuses as "internal affairs" is the better option. A very complex problem indeed.

There are plenty of US counties that could use some humanitarian intervention.

As usual, the Guardian has the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low...

If you have waterborne disease like that it's always a sign of inadequate infrastructure.

There's no such a thing as a humanitarian intervention. As sibling posts say, there's plenty of market for it, if a country really wants to do it.

Even ignoring this aspect, there are two reasons for not waging a war to NK:

  1. NK is under China's protection, primarily for acting as buffer country (this is a valid political reason)
  2. NK does have offensive power; even without nuclear warheads, due to geographical positioning, it can do a huge amount of damange to SK.

Both of those things are already things that we have and do not need any more of to justify a full-scale nuclear war. I'm pretty sure the thing keeping it from becoming a real war zone is mutually assured destruction. Even mutually assured destruction aside, I think most people realize whatever kind of conflict occurs it won't be pretty for the parties involved.

Of course, letting things go for long enough to actually allow North Korea to produce working nuclear weapons is probably not very smart either, but I guess hindsight is 20:20.

"North Korea is a very poor country and like any other poor country it has serious health problems"

Sounds like a reasonable statement. How do you get from this to "motivate military invasion"?

How can one make the land of milk and honey look bad?

Military invasion, while unlikely (cost, mainly destruction,) would probably be better for 99.99% of North Koreans. Oh, if they are ever attacked it will be because they have threatened to nuke quite a few countries.

0.01% of NK population is ~2500. There's going to be a lot more casualties of war than that.

>>0.01% of NK population is ~2500. There's going to be a lot more casualties of war than that.

wrong way to calculate. Sometimes you need to die so others, including your family, have a chance.

Of course, you can say who are we to decide that "John" in North Korea should die for freedom...

Oh come on, not everything is a conspiracy.

Parasites are often closely associated with unusual diets. Here's the CDC page on screening refugees for parasites[1].

There's a vast amount of literature about this[2]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/domest...

[2] https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=parasites+and+diet+r...

Start seeding the tech media now with stories about North Korean malware about which they knew since 2013. Check.

Nobody wants military intervention.

Not the EU/UK Not Japan Not China Not South Korea Not Russia

The US possibly but who listens to them anymore?

I wonder if most people had similar levels of parasites before sanitation became common.

There is a theory that humans co evolved with gut worms, and only very recently live without them; certain body functions improve when worms are present: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_parasitic_worms_o...

Google helminthic therapy and old friends hypothesis.

Consider parasites as a tax on the calories consumed. Evading this tax was beneficial to our existence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com