Michael Harrop
Active member
Moving this here because the archived version takes forever to load. Originally posted on 15 Oct 2018.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau8816
A few months ago I passed on this https://maximiliankohler.medium.com/do-not-eat-dirt-63b5d04bf4ca info to 5 authors/researchers, asking for retractions and instead to focus on the real issues & fixes: https://maximiliankohler.medium.com/a-critical-look-at-the-current-and-longstanding-ethos-of-childbearing-the-repercussions-its-been-6e37f7f7b13f. Two of them are co-authors on the Preserving microbial diversity paper, so I'm guessing that paper is their response. It's largely in complete agreement.
It's nice to see professionals who are responsive to feedback, but unfortunately the news coverage (medicalxpress, newatlas, and theguardian) of that paper was awful. It focused almost solely on the microbial "Noah's Ark" portion (IMO the least important). Ignoring the more important aspects - stopping and reversing the trend/damage. I wrote to those 3 publishers, but of course I would encourage others to do the same.
The issues with the "Noah's Ark":
The more important suggestions by the authors:
Looking at climate change for example. You have the vast majority of climate scientists in complete agreement about the severity of the problem. They have also been consistently vocal about it. And it has been majorly covered in the news. With even all countries coming together to try and implement fixes. Yet STILL it seems that was not enough. I believe these human microbiome issues are of a comparable threat to climate change. But unlike with climate change (where we have at least been moving slowly in the right direction), we have been going in the wrong direction for decades, which makes the issue all the more severe.
I've been working my way through this free microbiome coursera (lots of helpful info in it - I recommend it): Gut Check: Exploring Your Microbiome https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome/home/welcome
And they have a short interview with Martin Blaser on antibiotics: https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome/lecture/ARVhF/interview-on-location-in-tanzania-with-martin-blaser
They also link out to this longer NPR interview which is also excellent: https://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/302899093/modern-medicine-may-not-be-doing-your-microbiome-any-favors
I see that he's also an author on the Preserving microbial diversity paper. And also wrote "Missing Microbes", which I'll be reading next. (EDIT: see my summary/review: https://archive.fo/9wumw)
I've posted all over Reddit about this and have failed to encourage action on it.
Other supporting evidence:
US Immigration Westernizes the Human Gut Microbiome (Nov 2018) "The data presented here extend these findings to humans by providing evidence that compounded intergenerational loss of taxonomic and functional diversity is occurring in US immigrant populations, supporting the model of disappearing human microbiota proposed by Blaser and Falkow (2009)."
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau8816
A few months ago I passed on this https://maximiliankohler.medium.com/do-not-eat-dirt-63b5d04bf4ca info to 5 authors/researchers, asking for retractions and instead to focus on the real issues & fixes: https://maximiliankohler.medium.com/a-critical-look-at-the-current-and-longstanding-ethos-of-childbearing-the-repercussions-its-been-6e37f7f7b13f. Two of them are co-authors on the Preserving microbial diversity paper, so I'm guessing that paper is their response. It's largely in complete agreement.
It's nice to see professionals who are responsive to feedback, but unfortunately the news coverage (medicalxpress, newatlas, and theguardian) of that paper was awful. It focused almost solely on the microbial "Noah's Ark" portion (IMO the least important). Ignoring the more important aspects - stopping and reversing the trend/damage. I wrote to those 3 publishers, but of course I would encourage others to do the same.
The issues with the "Noah's Ark":
- It doesn't stop the continual expansion of the problem that is having drastic detriments on society.
- It seems like current limitations in detection & sequencing would be drastic barriers to the success of such a plan. References: https://humanmicrobiome.info/testing/. And the authors of the paper seemed to acknowledge this as well (they mention culture in particular). It seems like preserving whole stool samples from the named populations (tribes) till techniques are more advanced would be the best option. But based on my limited knowledge, microbial viability declines over time, even when frozen at low temperatures.
- Tribes are not the "be all" of "ideal microbiome". The health of various tribal populations varies significantly. I believe it was Weston A. Price who documented this. See this documentary for example showing obviously unhealthy Amazonian tribe members: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LynTcYSmAl4. Certainly they would not be good candidates for FMT donors. The discussion section of this 2014 review paper "Rural and urban microbiota - To be or not to be?" provides relevant discussion/info on this as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4153773/
The more important suggestions by the authors:
curtailing the overuse of antibiotics, limiting cesarean sections to those that are necessary and not for convenience, promoting breastfeeding, removing antibacterial compounds from everyday activities, and changing diets to emphasize the nutrients and foods that promote microbial diversity and metabolism that benefits our health.
We must examine ways to accelerate microbial restoration to recover functional activities, those reduced through microbiota depletion or those that, like weeds, overgrew in an affected microbiota, suppressing normal activities and health.
Looking at climate change for example. You have the vast majority of climate scientists in complete agreement about the severity of the problem. They have also been consistently vocal about it. And it has been majorly covered in the news. With even all countries coming together to try and implement fixes. Yet STILL it seems that was not enough. I believe these human microbiome issues are of a comparable threat to climate change. But unlike with climate change (where we have at least been moving slowly in the right direction), we have been going in the wrong direction for decades, which makes the issue all the more severe.
I've been working my way through this free microbiome coursera (lots of helpful info in it - I recommend it): Gut Check: Exploring Your Microbiome https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome/home/welcome
And they have a short interview with Martin Blaser on antibiotics: https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome/lecture/ARVhF/interview-on-location-in-tanzania-with-martin-blaser
They also link out to this longer NPR interview which is also excellent: https://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/302899093/modern-medicine-may-not-be-doing-your-microbiome-any-favors
I see that he's also an author on the Preserving microbial diversity paper. And also wrote "Missing Microbes", which I'll be reading next. (EDIT: see my summary/review: https://archive.fo/9wumw)
I've posted all over Reddit about this and have failed to encourage action on it.
Other supporting evidence:
US Immigration Westernizes the Human Gut Microbiome (Nov 2018) "The data presented here extend these findings to humans by providing evidence that compounded intergenerational loss of taxonomic and functional diversity is occurring in US immigrant populations, supporting the model of disappearing human microbiota proposed by Blaser and Falkow (2009)."
- Format correct?
- Yes
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