vox clamantis in deserto

This weekend I was reminded of a George Carlin sketch that I think is appropriate for this year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s&feature=player_embedded. Thank you Mike for sharing this.

While I do not agree with everything Mr. Carlin said, for instance I do wash my hands far more frequently than he did, I think his comments should give us pause. Maybe this is why he lived to see 71. Or maybe he could have lived longer if he washed his hands more often or ate higher quality food.

Speculation aside, he does bring up a good point: we are slowly preventing our bodies from having their natural immune reaction. For example, the hygiene hypothesis states that the rise in allergic diseases is partly explained by an increase in cleanliness standards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis). Based on that we have at least one generation of naive immune systems. This makes me wonder whether or not today's high school and college graduates will live as long as their parents or grandparents. Only time will tell. Until then, I will attempt to make my immune system as strong as Mr. Carlin's.

I think one of the greatest modern fallacies of logic is that being exposed to pathogens automatically results in disease. If that were the case what is the point of having an immune systems. We are not in a sterile environment. There are germs all around us, many of which are on us or in us. If all of them produced their respective disease, we would never know what it is like to not be sick. It seems obvious that disease is not a result of germs but rather a result of poor health. It is likely that the more germs one is exposed to the stronger that person's immune system will be.