[Steer]

I am sorry that you got cancer and had to remove those parts of your body. I am also happy that you now seem better (and I am guessing and being hopeful here).

That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health. If you had provided links to research that proved that soap and shampoo use in the larger population made people with a defective immune system safer I would not have a problem with your comments, but I am just not sure that is the case.

If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite this, allow peanuts in our society? It is not a necessity.

Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing.

[logfromblammo]

I also find the argument to be spurious. Indiscriminate disinfectants kill benign microbes as well as pathogenic microbes, leaving a clean surface to be colonized by the first species that land on it, whether good or bad.

The fine article details a practice wherein rather than apply a scorched-earth policy to all microbes, known good species are intentionally cultivated to both deny a beachhead to invading pathogenic microbes, and for other benefits, such as removal of unpleasant body wastes.

Centuries of scientific inquiry has shown that there really is no such thing as a clean and sterile surface outside of certain specially-constructed rooms with carefully managed airflows. Soaps and shampoos simply favor species able to spread and multiply quickly. when used frequently enough, they also prevent humans from becoming a disease vector.

That frequency is a matter for investigation. It may be that only physicians, nurses, and hospital staff who always wash thoroughly before each and every patient contact are actually contributing to public health, and that people who wash every time they pass a sink during the day--maybe once per 3 hours--are simply breeding for triclosan resistance and favoring the tenacious and rapidly multiplying species.

[XorNot]

That isn't how resistance works.

Resistance to anything has an evolutionary cost - the most resistant species tend to breed slowest, the hardiest environmentals even slower.

Organisms which can live in volcanoes usually die when given mild conditions but competitor species instead.

Your statement also begs the question: given we're assuming you can reasonably disinfect yourself, why not simply re-innoculate with an optimum colony of bacterial species and short-circuit the negative effects?

[logfromblammo]

Leaving aside my pet peeve of people using "begs the question" inappropriately, your question is answered by the article.

An optimum colony of bacteria is hard to maintain and propagate outside the optimum environment--namely, on your skin. The colony also reacts negatively to being disinfected. The experiment is to establish such a microbiome and then leave it the hell alone.

[edoloughlin]

That said, I do not think it is right to try to guilt people into using things they do not want to use because you think it could possibly aid your health

There is a case to be made for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

[Terr_]

No, Herd Immunity is for infection risks which are SHARED across the whole herd. The point is to prevent the infection from reaching "critical mass".

What we're talking about here is different, it's a risk which applies to a small minority of specific individuals.

[criley2]

Herd Immunity has nothing to do with our personal bacteria cultures!

We are bacteria through and through! So much of our bodies and lives are dependent on bacteria.

You can't get herd immunity to a building block of our existence. You shouldn't want it.

[dllthomas]

The key point for herd immunity is epidemiological - keep resistance high so that most people will never encounter the bad pathogen even if they may be unusually weak against it. That doesn't apply to bacteria that are already prevalent everywhere and known to be less bad than other bacteria they're likely to replace.

[Fomite]

"Edit; Just to be clear; we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing."

Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health.

While I might disagree with the OP, the principle looks pretty similar.

[bmelton]

> Why? We're talking about controlling someone's potential infectiousness in the name of public health.

Because, as has been posted above, one's personal biome is never going to be aided by herd immunity.

In short, if I have Polio, the chances of it spreading to a mostly vaccinated society is lessened because any immunized individual breaks the infection chain.

They're slightly similar in concept, but not really. Beyond that, the argument seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding that has persisted beyond its correction. Not washing skin and hair with soap and shampoo is a dramatically different matter than not washing one's hands with soap and water.

[jrabone]

I'm still alive, that's as far as it goes. 30% + chance of recurrence and it's not like I can have those organs removed a second time. However, it's an improvement on the initial diagnosis which was stage 4 adenocarcinoma with peritoneal metastasis (ie. a Kaplan-Meyer survival of about 5 years max).

It's not just immuno-suppressed people, it's everyone, and a risk/benefit comparison with peanut allergies is spurious. If everyone smeared themselves in peanut butter before they left the house each morning, you'd have a closer comparison.

Plenty of studies at http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html - click on "Improved Health".

[rosser]

You're creating a false dilemma between not washing your hands and destroying your skin biome. TFA is about the latter, but you're citing studies about the former.

[jrabone]

TFA doesn't contain enough detail about hand-washing as opposed to body & hair, in much the same way that most people don't like talking about wiping their backsides vs washing them after defecating.

[Steer]

I must say that I feel bad discussing this with you, I do not enjoy trying to be objective when discussing with someone stricken by cancer like you. You have obviously been through a trauma and you are still living it. If I were religious I would pray for your recovery, but since I am not I will just say that I do hope that you live and prosper.

I am not convinced that an increased use of soap and shampoo would lead to a healthier society overall, much like an increased use of antibiotics does not seem to make a healthier society overall.

[DanBC]

> I am not convinced that an increased use of soap and shampoo would lead to a healthier society

Food poisoning can be fatal and can have severe consequences.

Some food poisoning is a result of poor hand washing hygiene.

People washing their hands correctly would reduce the amount of problems of food poisoning.

[dllthomas]

I don't know that this was intended to preclude hand washing.

[marvin]

The big question is whether decreased use of soap and shampoo leads to a less healthy society overall. Just as with modern vaccines and antibiotics, modern first-world people just have no idea how bad things were before the invention of soap.

The researchers in this article are definitely onto something - a better understanding of microorganisms' symbiosis with humans could have great benefits - but let's not forget that playing with this on a large scale is a massive experiment with potential negative consequences. The precautionary principle holds.

[jrabone]

Thank you (I'm not religious either). I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable, that's not my intent at all. In purely objective terms, there's obviously a benefit to culling the weak.

I wouldn't necessarily advocate for _increased_ use of soap and shampoo (and certainly not for antibiotics). I also believe there is an argument that partial disinfection is much worse than nothing, when viewed in terms of selection pressure on a microbial population, and I don't think daily use of antibiotic soap is a good idea (although Triclosan is actually pretty useless anyway).

However, I definitely don't think we should be encouraging _less_ hygiene, even though I'm obviously biased.

[sukuriant]

I think an important question to be answered now is "which is less hygiene"? There have been a few one-offs of people that forewent not showers, but soap in the showers, in preference of scrubbing themselves, but not using modern cleaners. Them doing that was probably a much slower version of what was happening in this experiment's case.

It didn't go into details; but, if the flora and fauna on our bodies actually protect us from the bacteria that is bad for us, then it is beneficial to have a layer of it. If instead, we're just carrying around animals that just happen to be there and don't do anything, then it may be a moot point. That said, if it is beneficial, then the population is actually less healthy for not having the layer; and if we had the layer, we'd get sick less often and be in less danger.

hygiene and rubbing chemicals all over yourself, while certainly related, aren't the same thing

[XorNot]

The issue is there's a lot of interesting science which looks suspiciously like it's being monetized into some handwavy - and potentially dangerous - claims.

For example the idea of bacteria protecting you is not so simple. They don't target "bad organisms" - there really aren't bad organisms. Monocultures are bad because they have no competitors. A mixed-ecology where you have several or many species which do compete usually inhibits the ability of any 1 type to take over successfully.

Of course, this is all happening on the surface of your skin, and how stable is that environment anyway? History says not very - and on top of that pretty much all of these things are really nasty if they successfully get under the skin.

One successful way to treat IBS-like symptoms for example is to take a course of antibiotics which are known to be mild - that is, they tend to have a balancing effect on the gut's fauna. I can personally attest this makes all the difference in the world.

Conversely, it's not at all clear that probiotics do anything - for reasons similar to the above. In a crowded environment, they can't easily take over, and bacteria are all about film-forming and quorum sensing and the like - isolated cells are much less active.

On top of those issues, there's a scale one. Humans basically regard about 150-500 people as being actual human beings like them (Dunbar's number). Historically we tribalized on that sort of scale but almost every culture started to use various scents or cleansing practices when they built larger and larger groupings. Sure, maybe we can get by with intact surface cultures, but can we get along? The human nose is important. Try being in a room with someone who has a bad smelling odour - the urge to simply leave is powerful. The urge to try and wash it off is powerful. Its not clear that we'd be at all tolerant of people who smelt sufficiently different - and I suspect that's why we standardized on a zero which we can all achieve.

[dragonwriter]

> If I try to give an example, there are people that are hyper-allergic to peanuts and they will die if they are exposed to peanuts. Why do we, despite this, allow peanuts in our society?

Because the combination of decent emergency response and site-specific limitations on peanuts in places where there is a particular likelihood of them affecting someone who is hyper-allergic is currently viewed as an effective- enough mitigation to the hazard posed, not because people have an unrestrained entitlement to act as they want even when it is harmful to other's health.

[dublinben]

>we are not talking about vaccination; I think that is a completely different thing

Why is it so different? They both contribute to societal health, and personal hygiene is much less painful than getting your complete battery of vaccines.

[logfromblammo]

Vaccines are specifically targeted. General hygeine practices can impact benign or neutral species as much as the pathogens, whether the latter are present or not.