Flexible Bodies, parts 1 & 2, set 7

Quote taken from interviewee, Peter Keller, biology professor:

“I think people who don’t think about the immune system walk around saying, Oh God, this farm is all full of germs. My mother, for example, my mother and my grandmother, their attitude was the world is very dangerous and there are all these germs and what if we get them. I mean they never ever thought in terms of, well, we’re strong, we get them every day. And we beat them.”
(Flexible Bodies, Emily Martin, p. 38).

Martin and her graduate students questioned people in different communities near Baltimore about how they perceive health and how the people’s personal and societal culture has changed along side the changing of their perception of health. Much of her discussion in parts one and two of her book center around how the medical system, scientists and regular people have changing and evolving perceptions of germs, antibodies and immunity. Early in our modern medical history, the body was viewed as a fortress with barriers that must be kept free from germs and dirt, so hygiene was very important. Martin talks about the early excessive use of disinfectants in the home and the obsession with disinfecting the outside of the body, without really understanding how the inside of the body was capable of fighting diseases. The view of beating germs has evolved to emphasizing vaccines, antibodies and the immune system. People in the early part of the 20^th century did not understand the greater complexities of the human body that are understood today, and there will be even more discoveries about health in the future.

Fifty years ago when the emphasis was on wiping away germs and zealously scrubbing off dirt, when cleanliness was next to godliness, it seems like a disservice had been done to the human body. Like in the excerpt above, the older generations would look at a farm and think it was full of germs because it was full of dirt and animals. They thought that a dirty surface meant germs and did not look beyond that. I had heard about studies a few years ago that said people who grew up on farms had healthier immune systems than city people did. I found recent articles like the following that asserted that pregnant mothers who spent time on farms, in barns and drinking fresh milk had newborns with fewer occurrences of allergies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520090438.htm

There are also studies that show that children who have lived on farms since at least five years old have less cases of asthma. This video from WebMD talks about the trend that farm kids tend to be healthier those not living on a farm. http://www.webmd.com/video/environmental-allergens-immune-system

Being exposed to animals, dander, dust, dirt and all the good stuff that comes with living on a farm helps build up immune systems. I grew up on a mini-farm; we had horses, goats, pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, birds and reptiles and I consider myself healthy. I do not have allergies or asthma, but I do get the occasional cold. It is a little ironic that our parents and grandparents were so worried about the dirtiness of farms when shielding children from all possible germs that should be boosting their immune systems may be the very cause of the rise of asthma and allergies. Protecting children from all exposure to germs is still happening today, and it is creating sickly people. I understand the apprehension though. Take MRSA, for example, a super staph infection that causes abscesses on the skin and serious illness, is passed by contact with infected surfaces and people, and which has evolved to be resistant to antibiotics. (The overuse of antibiotics is a topic for later discussion). While trying to kill all germs, we have created strains of bacteria that are harder for our bodies to fight off.

Photos from:

www.livingpictures.org/domesticanimals.htm

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/slideshow.php?id=9158