Speedwell

I know many vegan scientists, including an immunologist. I know people on the autism spectrum who get upset when you tell them you're against vaccines, because they know the science.

There are people walking around my office right now sick with the flu who didn't get the shot and won't effing go home. I got the shot early because I have health issues that make the flu dangerous for me. I am just now getting over a long bout of bronchitis from a nasty winter cold. Vaccines work best when enough people take them that the occasional person in whom the vaccine didn't work is still protected from exposure. Here's to hoping I'm not that occasional person.

SultanOfSwing

I bet none of them are evolutionary biologists ...

Speedwell

Surprise. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula

Remember there are health reasons and compassionate reasons to be a vegan.

SultanOfSwing

Health reasons are marginal, compassionate reasons are a load of hippie, bleeding heart bullshit.

Look at our teeth, we're omnivores. Deal with it.

Speedwell

"Deal with it" is not an argument. What people choose to stuff into their pie holes is honestly none of my concern, unless and until their choices impact mine. Health reasons are not marginal to someone with, say, estrogen dependent breast cancer; compassionate reasons are not bullshit to the compassionate.

SultanOfSwing

Evolution is not concerned with any of that. We would not have reached the point where you and I can talk about it on our computers if early hominids hadn't moved from scavenging to hunting and if they hadn't started eating meat. That's a fact.

Anyway, I'll leave it with a joke:
How do you spot a vegan at a dinner party? Don't worry, they'll let you know.

scrubbedexpat097

Hopefully not H1N1


Lot's of emails flying around our County Health Department today about the case's in Montgomery Cty and now in Harris Cty. Not good news

SultanOfSwing

There has been a worrying amount of anti-vax crapola floating around the interwebs these days.

What's with all the pseudo-science? Makes me embarrassed to be alive in the same era as these people.

steveq

Yes, but you'll BE alive in the next era....the Anti-vaccers are selecting themselves out.....

Speedwell

Unfortunately not just themselves. I HAD the flu shot, but because of how many volunteer flu incubator experiments are walking around the office, I'm afraid some anti-vax schmuck will give me a mutated copy of the virus that is different enough from the jab I got that it will overcome my immunity and make me sick.

steveq

Look on the bright side, there's a new vaccine in test which should block ALL flu viruses....for those of us who take one.....

Does the virus mutate the same in humans ? I thought the mixing had to occur in non-human species ?

Speedwell

No, no, viruses can mutate in a Petri dish, or any other place where they can breed and multiply. Every so often variations creep in, and every so often one or more of those variations, all at once or over time, happens to change the organism just enough that it operates differently from the original organism under the same circumstances.

You're conflating mutation (which happens over the course of normal reproduction) with recombination (which happens when information from one organism is inserted into the genome of another). Recombination can happen in any organism; humans aren't immune. We can actually see in the human genome places where it is likely that recombination has happened; it's most visible in the relatively inactive sections called popularly "junk DNA".

steveq

But have any flu viruses mutated/recombined between human hosts and become more dangerous ? Some of the biological agents did IIRC. The US weaponised version of smallpox was created from a strain extracted from a victim of an earlier strain.

Speedwell

I don't know about recombinations, but mutations, yes, regularly. They are more dangerous simply if they're sufficiently mutated that people don't have immunity from them based on previous bouts of related flu or from flu shots.

SultanOfSwing

Makes it a bit better, that.