It makes them vote Republican

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on February 13, 2006 - 7:19am.
on Tech

Mind Control by Parasites
Bill Christensen
Sat Feb 11, 8:00 AM ET

Half of the world's human population is infected with Toxoplasma, parasites in the body—and the brain. Remember that.

Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite found in the guts of cats; it sheds eggs that are picked up by rats and other animals that are eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts in the bodies of the intermediate rat hosts, including in the brain.

Since cats don't want to eat dead, decaying prey, Toxoplasma takes the evolutionarily sound course of being a "good" parasite, leaving the rats perfectly healthy. Or are they?

Oxford scientists discovered that the minds of the infected rats have been subtly altered. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that healthy rats will prudently avoid areas that have been doused with cat urine. In fact, when scientists test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to induce neurochemical panic.

However, it turns out that Toxoplasma-ridden rats show no such reaction. In fact, some of the infected rats actually seek out the cat urine-marked areas again and again. The parasite alters the mind (and thus the behavior) of the rat for its own benefit.

If the parasite can alter rat behavior, does it have any effect on humans?

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Submitted by cnulan on February 13, 2006 - 6:11pm.

Metaphor or overlooked reality?

"To sustain the observed bacterial behavior that we have
dubbed social intelligence, the bacteria might need to use
even more exotic genomic features. What we have in mind
is a bacterial version of genome cybernetics, by which we
mean the ability of the genome to perform information
processing and alter itself accordingly [44,45]....

These findings illustrate that rather than wait for
mutations to occur randomly, cells can apparently keep
some genetic variation on tap and move them to `hard disk'
storage in the coding part of the DNA if they turn out to be
beneficial over several life cycles.

Can bacteria use communication to collectively perform
similar `tricks'? As Francis Bacon said: `It would be an
unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things
which have never yet been done can be done except by
means which never have yet been tried.' Implying that we
will need to do experiments that specifically test for these
conceptual questions and that correlate colonial patterns
with intracellular changes and dynamics to answer the
above question.

Epilogue
The life, death and well-being of each of our cells depends
on a colony of hundreds to thousands of former bacteria it
carries: the mitochondria, which have their own genetic
code, collective self-identity and self-interests [49]. Could,
then, our internal and external linguistic communication
and social intelligence be traced back to bacteria – the
simplest of all organisms? And if so, shouldn't we try to
learn from bacteria about the immune and the central
nervous systems, which we use to communicate with other
organisms?"


Submitted by cnulan on February 13, 2006 - 6:16pm.

Research has shown the link between chronic inflammation, cancer,
and cardiovascular disease. Time magazine published a very readable
article earlier this year which can be viewed online at:

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101040223/index.html

but requires subscription...do check out however the "how it works",
on the same page(free)-very cool images of microscopic battlegrounds
within the body.

Americans are THE illest muhfuggahs on the earth save perhaps
russians...., it should come as no surprise that microbial
parasitization accounts for the mass psychopathologies so plainly
evident in the U.S. - furthermore - that Africans in the Americas
would eventually begin to succumb to the same parasitizing
pathogens - thus accounting for the emergence of the so-called

Black Conservative

More:
"First evidence of the molecular link between inflammation and cancer
has been shown by researchers at the University of California, San
Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Featured as the cover article in the
August 6, 2004 issue of the journal Cell, the study also demonstrated
that inactivation of a gene involved in the inflammatory process can
dramatically reduce tumor development in mice with a gastrointestinal
form of cancer.

The relationship between cancer and inflammation due to chronic
infection has been suspected, but not proven, for many years. In a
1986 study, for example, one researcher compared the inflammatory
response to a wound healing response, saying tumors were wounds that
do not heal."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040806095453.htm




Submitted by cnulan on February 13, 2006 - 7:14pm.

The politicians endorsed by far-right fundamentalist Christian groups are remarkably consistent in voting against environmental protections. Why would that be? Perhaps because they believe, as Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt once put it, "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." In other words, environmental destruction merely serves as a harbinger of the End Times, when righteous Christians will be lifted to heaven. These views are not held just by a few fringe types, but by a large and influential voting bloc that backs more than 40 percent of the members of Congress, including much of its leadership. And that's bad news for the planet, writes Glenn Scherer -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

today in Grist: The Godly Must Be Crazy -- by Glenn Scherer

What's most amazing about these churches, is that not only do you have an evangelical contagion vector, i.e., the parasite(s) precipitate host behaviour to contaminate others, concurrent with this you have a mechanism for validation/verification of an infected state.  i.e., the behavioural norms within churches, and careful policing of the same, ensure that only fecund susceptibles will hang around while natural immunes will tend to self-exclude themselves from the evangelical host pool....,

Submitted by cnulan on February 13, 2006 - 7:20pm.

Bacteria are the oldest and most abundant biomass occupying this
planet both inside and out.

Now that all the tools of the U.S. are at the disposal of the
parasitized mass, now that the primary reservoir of natural
immunes has been infected to a degree (shared *way of life*/residual
resistance to the cultic illogic) a parasitized hegemony can proceed in ways
unthinkable during the last cyclical outing 60-80 years ago. I'm not
suggesting that 20th century fascism was by any means the first mass cycle
of this phenomenon.

Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even
human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi
waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial
matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly
complex conglomerations of human, fungal, bacterial and viral cells.

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65252,00.html

A hive mind (sometimes spelled hivemind) is a form of collective
consciousness strongly exhibiting traits of conformity and
groupthink.  The term is also used in science fiction to describe a group of
individual organisms that together share a single unified mind,
distributing thought and communicating with each other through
telepathic means. This is somewhat analogous to how colonies of
social insects such as ants, bees and termites can seem to behave as
if they were a single collective organism.

What would motivate a thanaturgic hive-mind? What stands to gain the most
from the resident select's continuing conservative fascist cultiform predations?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_mind

We could call it language-based. We could surmise that it expresses at the
level of neurochemistry. We could even, many of us, by the way it acts,
speculate on a deeper darker origin to this condition.

http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/classic/classictales/OxygenWars1.html
http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/classic/classictales/OxygenWars2.html

The paradox of thanaturgic *conservative* social behaviour is
much easier to reconcile with parasite induced psychosis and
systematic interspecies aggression than any other likely
cause.....,  it also accounts for the intractable deceit and
peculiar litigious irrationality of the typical conservative host
organism. 



Submitted by Prometheus 6 on February 13, 2006 - 8:21pm.
I never know what's gonna set you off.
Submitted by Cobb on February 14, 2006 - 1:22am.
Neither does he. But it's nice to know that you've given him a place where he can work out his issues. You let us know if he gets any better. mkay?
Submitted by cnulan on February 14, 2006 - 10:45am.

Mrs. Cobb - usherboard chairwoman and black conservative exemplar....,  Just as full of kooties as she wanna be.....,

Submitted by Temple3 on February 14, 2006 - 12:32pm.

Is that an afro-puff Cobb, circa 1977??
Submitted by cnulan on February 14, 2006 - 1:59pm.

nah, I just photoshopped the afropuff on old N-BRA after the kooties went buckwild on him a few weeks ago and caused him to spontaneously self-mutilate. prolly called himself getting ready to apply for the NBRA's RNC financed Minority Candidate School or some other such body snatching initiative...,

Submitted by Quaker in a Basement on February 14, 2006 - 8:44pm.
RNC financed Minority Candidate School or some other such body snatching initiative...,
Haw. Outstanding comment.
Submitted by cnulan on February 14, 2006 - 9:21pm.

RNC MINORITY CANDIDATE SCHOOL

Republican National Committee

Minority Candidate School

April 28-29, 2006 - Washington, DC

 

Equality, freedom and opportunity have been the founding and guiding principles of the Republican Party since its inception in the early 1850's. From this humble beginning, the party of Lincoln has had a long and distinguished legacy of encouraging, supporting and electing minority candidates. In honor of that legacy, and in response to the growing number of Republican minority candidates, the RNC is pleased to announce the Minority Candidate Training College open to any Republican minority candidate running for public office in 2006. During this two day training college candidates will learn how to run grassroots campaigns, fundraise, build a 72 Hour Program, and win their specific races. Candidates will be taught by Republican leaders and professional campaign advisors. There is no fee to participate in the College, but candidates are responsible for their transportation to and from the College and their lodging.

If you wish to apply for admission to the College, please respond completely to the following requests for information and return this application with your typed responses by noon, March 31st via fax to (202) 863-8808. If you have any questions, please contact the RNC Political Department at (202) 863-8833 or through Email at: [P6: email address redacted...let people look for that shit if they want to. Hell, I SHOULD de-link the website...]

Submitted by cnulan on February 15, 2006 - 10:31am.

Sorry bout bringing a level-4 specimen up into the lab without proper safeguards or adequate warning.  Mebbe it's just my lack of search skillz, but I couldn't find this on the web. The RNC, GOP, and NBRA didn't have it on any of their websites. As of y'day when I received it, NBRA was only circulating this invitation through private black republican lists.

Given that it's an invitation to unintended irony, one can easily understand the polymorphic contagion strategery underlying its not quite fully public circulation...,

 

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on February 15, 2006 - 10:57am.
I was talking about delinking the NBRA site.
As of y'day when I received it, NBRA was only circulating this invitation through private black republican lists.
Of course.