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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> But, local media say, Amou Haji finally succumbed to pressure and washed a few months ago.

> According to Iran's IRNA news agency, he became ill shortly afterwards and died on Sunday.

I'm really hoping an autopsy is done to figure out what exactly killed him, because this might be the most interesting opportunity for a hygiene case study in generations. Identifying even just one potential opportunistic disease, autoimmune condition, or even mental phenomenon which might've precipitated his passing... I'm not saying it's likely something novel will be found, but it's more likely than not.

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I had a 40 year old car that was rarely serviced but ran like a champ. I moved across country and the new mechanic told me I should use some cleansing agent to de-gunk all of the various hoses/manifolds/whatever in the engine. It seemed expensive so I went for to a second mechanic and mentioned it, and he was adamant that I not do it, and that all that gunk was what was sealing the hoses and letting the car operate.

I took his advice and drove the car for another 10 years before donating it.

Maybe something similar happened there? Maybe he had scabs that we're ugly but protective - they got scrubbed off, and then his body had to deal with a whole new wave of pathogens.

You're talking about a car and you have no idea what happened to it.

I donated it to a local charity. I believe they used it to shuttle elderly people to hospital appointments.

No need to be rude. He’s making an analogy based on the parent comment and an experience he had.

It’s a good story.

What killed him was probably the same thing that motivated him to finally get cleaned

Actually that's probably the most likely case lol. Still hoping for a public autopsy and case study just for the sake of the science.

Ah, but there's also this part, apparently his water and diet were no better than his outer shell:

> his diet had consisted of rotten meat and unsanitary water drunk from an old oil can.

> Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad, the news agency said.

And then there's the picture where he's smoking four cigarettes at once.

I mean, I'm really kind of impressed.

> Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad, the news agency said.

I can’t avoid looking at this man’s situation from the a Western “mental health awareness” lens. Why would he subject himself to this? Is he attempting to exert control as a result of a past situation where he felt he had none (psychosocial trauma)?

On Keto? Old hat. On Paleo? So 2015.

Get you on the Keith Richards.

If I'm remembering correctly, years ago I read about this man(pretty sure it's the same man) and he was known to smoke dried out animal feces. So...yea...not just a "smoker" but a smoker of feces.

Wow... That's good shit.

It's possible his immune system was busy keeping infections and so on at bay, but once those targets were removed the immune system reacted in a way detrimental to his health? A sort of shock to the system.

> Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad

Maybe he died of sadness after all...

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