Toxoplasma gondii

Dear Tim,

Strange as it may sound, while at university, I spent a great deal of my spare time in the library researching parasites. This is partly because my friend had returned from India with a couple of nasty intestinal bugs and they pretty much defined his life for the next couple of years.

I recall that there is a parasite – a small worm - bearing an unpronounceable Latin name, that migrates from the gut to the brain of a human host. This journey takes about a year. Having reached the brain, the worm lays its eggs.

Anything that can colonise the brain is likely to cause physical damage that could upset the personality, although the type of changes would depend on which parts of the brain were infected.

That worm was a tropical parasite and so it is unlikely that it would have infected an entire English village. The most likely candidate for causing mass personality change in the UK would be Toxoplasma gondii. By the way, you may not want to read this if you are a cat lover.

Toxoplasma gondii is endemic in cats and it is estimated that around half of the UK human population is also host to the parasite. In France and Germany 80-90% of the population are thought to be infected. Once infected there is no cure and the parasite will continue to multiply throughout the life of its host.

In rats, the toxoplasma appears to undermine natural behaviour. They become less fearful of cats and even seek them out. Obviously, this isn’t very good news for the rat, but it does benefit the parasite.

Although research into the effects on human behaviour is still in the early stages, it appears that infected men become more prone to fits of aggression and anti-social behaviour. They also take less care over their personal appearance. Infected women show a tendency towards promiscuity and become more fun loving and easy going.

There is also an unfortunate increase in the incidence of schizophrenia and depression, as well as a decrease in reaction times and a drop in IQ.

It is unlikely that Toxoplasma gondii alone would be enough to make an entire village vanish off the face of the earth, but I wonder if an outbreak of the parasite taken in conjunction with another catastrophic event might explain the disappearance of Oldton. Perhaps an environmental or industrial disaster damaged the immune systems of Oldton residents, which allowed the Toxoplasma gondii parasite to produce more dramatic effects than is normal.

It is strange that in the other Oldton thread, we have recently been discussing dogs and now, all of a sudden, we learn about this parasite, whose main gateway into the human species is through the domestic cat.

----------------
Jonathan Kepple

Comments

[Abram]

I read that even though it's a cat parasite dogs spread it more. The eggs take a few days to hatch so if you are quick to get the turds out of the house you face less risk. Dogs have the habit of eating animal digest. Also roaches are a big spreader of it. The biggest cause of infection seems to be under cooked meat and unwashed fruit and vegetables. Scientists have no idea how it rewrites brains. See they can't understand how a chemical can target an exact behaviour. The reason is that, that isn't not how it works. they burrow into the cells and take them over. They actually change the DNA of the cell. It is my belief however strange that they form a simple alternate consciousness inside the brain of the host. They target the areas of the brain that regulate drive and memory encoding. This gives them the ability to encode memory and reward behaviour based on activation of memory they encoded. This may explain why mental patents seem to refer to a "they" and have many commonalities. And so much of religions also refer to a "they" as in angels, gods, spirits, demons,,,I fit the description of an infected person, to the point of every normal girl I have slept with becomes a whore after a few months. So much for monogamy. But since a young kid I was also aware of a "they" I never hallucinated as it was a very subtle awareness. The memory they brought to conscious awareness, I often discovered was fact. It is hard to express this without loosing your attention, but one example is that I drew a diagram of an interstellar drive that seems to mirror the direction of NASA propulsion an I drew it as a Small child. It was a fusion drive, but the arc drive NASA has resembles it quite a bit. In my designs lasers were focused on a plasma stream and then a Z-pinch ignited the reaction inside of an intense magnetic field. I have talked to other sane people with my same trades and found they had some of the same experiences. So if your kid ever mentions a "they", get them tested. The imaginary friends are visible under the microscope. Just coincidence that we now put animal digest in animal feed? That would be very advantageous to the gondii.

For those that think the idea of a parasite becoming aware inside of a brain is imposable. I will point out that an onion has 12x the DNA of human and an amoeba has 200x the DNA of a human. Our DNA has all the information to construct a human including the mind. Is it so far out to hypothesise that a single celled organism capable of storing the information to construct way more then 200 completely different animals could figure us out?

Let me push the limits of this idea

Perhaps even many single cells can constitute a mind without even a host brain. See our brain is made up of single cells that constitute a mind. If one looks at how rocks are formed it is now scientifically suggested that they are formed by nanobes. Would their be planets without rock? Would you call them GOD? Even kidney stones and bones are formed by them. If one were to count all the cells in your body(including viruses) less then half are human. Humans are In fact walking hosts and the behaviour changes that gondii does to humans would fit the Christian description of the devil.

Let me push the limits of this idea more.

Christians did use to burn cats and they did get hit with the black plague after that too, didn't they? See the plague Bactria showed up in rats. Rats are a prime target of the gondii. This is a stretch but what if they are intelligent? what if in retribution for the killing of cats the created the black plague and took over the minds of the flees and spread it to us. See cats are the place that they sexually reproduce and wiping out cats would endanger their survival. In this I argue a very remote possibility and a great plot for a movie. The horror move to end all. The idea behind it would be that in every infected person was this linked intelligence that controlled most people. That to only people that resisted were crazy people that warned the main character about the plot in a garbled ritual of hallucinations. But there were commonalities. HE confides in a friend only to have the fried try and talk him out of the idea. In a bar somebody starts talking about damn conspiracy theorists and looks right at him and other such odd things. People begin to try and kill him as he finds out that they are intentionally putting the parasite eggs into peoples food. He started to think he was going crazy because until he runs into a person with Asberger syndrome that is totally aware of the plot but not crazy. He ends up becoming labeled as a terrorist for disrupting the animal industry and causing financial loss. A serious horror movie because exactly how much is false? They have had 6000 years to learn how we work, see they first found their way into humans in Egypt and Egypt worshiped the cat. The domesticated cat then traveled to Greece, Rome, and Asia.
People In fact do worship "them" and their power. here are some links.

wiki link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic

A cerimony, notice the eye of Horis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU49qqyMRVU

This is Americas leaders(Corporite and government). Even Tony Blare goes here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU49qqyMRVU

A person talking about it
http://youtube.com/DYBoulet

In affect they worship the Gondii.
You would have to a lot of research to come to this conclusion. Way more then just following the links.

[timw]

Abram

You provide much food for thought. Talking of which - what kind of diet would I need to stick to from birth in order to avoid 'becoming gondii'? Are there foods that the gondii can't infect. Are there animals other than dogs and cats and rats that we can have around the house that won't put us in danger?

We have come a long way from Oldton...