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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Toxo is no joke. Apart from opening the door to other diseases and chronic inflammation, it also induces neurological changes we still barely understand.

It might be a contributor to depression. What we do know is that it correlates positively with motorcycle deaths and risk taking behaviors [1]. Postmortem tests show this. (My old immunology professor used to say that toxoplasma indirectly leads to more organ donation.)

Keep your cats indoors. Or get a dog instead.

Toxo evolved to fuck with mice brains and make them not fear being eaten. Your brain operates on similar biochemistry.

Be careful.

[1] Not a direct citation, but similar claims : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117239/

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I don't get this. Just checked and about 30 percent of women have it when they give birth in Scandinavia - that's a number that keeps rising after that - so lets assume that 50 percent of the population has this at 50.

If this is the case, that's half the population, and if above is true, why isn't "everyone" sounding the alarm?

I have a few family members with cats, so i could pretty well have it.

Doesn't sound like "avoiding" is in any way an option looking at the stats.

Because the toxo doesn’t want us to sound the alarm

Priceless!

Part of why nobody is sounding the alarm is that we just get used to things.

If this month, 2000 extra people die from Y, it's a huge story and everyone jumps on finding a solution.

But if 2000 people have been dying per month from X for decades, no shits are given, it's just part of the background.

In the US it's 3,000 per month for car accidents and 4,000 per month for suicides, by way of example.

> Just checked and about 30 percent of women have it when they give birth in Scandinavia - that's a number that keeps rising after that

You should see the rates in France.

Can we, or can you only reference them sardonically?

The rate in France was 36.7% in 2010 (declining steadily year after year): http://www.bichat-larib.com/revue.presse/revue.presse.resume...

If this disease made your right hand fall off, everyone would be sounding the alarm. It doesn't. It might take someone who is in the bottom quartile for risk taking and move them up to the next quartile. Their behavior would still be within the bounds of normal, their friends might not even notice, but they might become say 50% more likely to die in a motorcycle crash.

The point being we don't really know the consequences, and it's probably a good idea to study this some more.

>but they might become say 50% more likely to die in a motorcycle crash

Or launch a startup.

We didn't have any idea about lead and mental illness, either.

Many historians say it had a role to play in the downfall of Rome.

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