To be slightly worried my child may become seriously ill now?

[walktothefront]

Because he's 14 months and has never been ill, not even a cold.

This man says for an immune system to work properly, it needs to be confronted with an infection in the first year of life.

This article says this, I've copied in a picture. This man is supposedly supported by lots of cancer research companies, and he has received or is going to receive an honour for his research and findings.

It's from The Guardian so less likely to be completely BS

Yes I agree the mainstream media reporting of science is terrible and doesn’t do anyone any favours

Back in the early 00’s when i did my phd the media went through a phase of playing with the idea that employing scientists as science reporters might be a good thing.

They did quite a few showy events for scientists where journalists would ask about your research and gush how worthy it all was. There was even a couple of internships.

This was something I was interested in so i went along to the events. Soon became clear that the science facts got in the way of a good story. There was also the thinking that only someone with a journalism degree could be a journalist, even with no prior knowledge of the subject they were writing about.

It soon tailed off and when I was coming to the end of the phd and looking for the next step they’d gone back to only considering journalism graduates.

Shame as i know many scientists who can write very well and in a way most people can understand. We aren’t all sheldon cooper .

Mother of four. Three completely healthy, one had leukaemia aged 7. Clear for one year now. All raised in the same house, same food, same school, same Every thing. It's the luck of the draw!

My DD1 had chicken pox when DD2 was 3 wks old. DD2 didn't get it and is 15 now and never had it even though she has been surrounded by it at school etc. Midwife said her immune system dealt with it as I was breastfeeding . Your DC's immune system will have been confronted thousands of times, they are just able to fight off bugs better.

I think the professor means that if a child was raised in a clinical bubble for the first year, the immune system wouldn't kick start.

Science is not bollocks. Science reporting frequently is.

THIS

Washing hands after using the toilet, before eating, after handling raw meat, pet poo etc are still really important. Spraying the air and banisters with Dettol spray is crazy.

This shows how poorly people understand probabilities and population-level discussion of risk.

'I did x and didn't get y, so it's a load of shite'.

No, the probability of you getting y was slim in the first place, but by doing x the small risk of y was increased.

BertrandRussell Mon 31-Dec-18 21:12:04
Sounds like utter bollocks to me. What are his sources/qualifications?

What an ignorant comment.

Prof Greaves is highly eminent cancer biologist and has made major
inroads into our understanding of childhood leukaemia.

Totally Mamma.

My four children are in their forties. One had a cold when 6 weeks old, and we were always amazed that the others were about 2 before they had any infections. They've all been fine.

I have leukaemia

This research is bloody important. It’s peer-reviewed up to the eyeballs and is a huge step forward in understanding how this appalling group of cancers works in the body and how to treat it,

Research by people such as this scientist has, in the last 30 years, transformed expected survival from about 10% to about 90%.

I strongly recommend you read up on this on places like the Bloodwise website, so you can see it in its research context and the work that is ongoing to make treatments more effective and less harsh.

Prof Greaves is highly eminent cancer biologist and has made major
inroads into our understanding of childhood leukaemia.

This with fucking bells on BTW

Here is the report from earlier this week about his knighthood in the NY honours

www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/pioneering-scientist-mel-greaves-is-knighted-after-research-to-unveil-cause-of-childhood-leukaemia

Well hopefully anyone zolfora ing the shit out of their homes will pause for thought. I really can't get my head round people who disinfect their homes like it's a sort of air freshener and don't understand why they should not do this.

Yes, the man is a god and his research needs to be applauded and built upon not dismissed just because people don’t want to understand how science works.

Prof Greaves is highly eminent cancer biologist and has made major
inroads into our understanding of childhood leukaemia.

Yeah but i know a kid with leukaemia who was raised on a farm dealing with animals and all sorts.

Therefore I am right and the prof who has spent 30 years studying leukaemia must be talking bollocks.

Funny that but my mum and gran would put me and sis out in all weathers when babes, let us play in as much mud and shit as we wanted when we could move under our own steam, did the same with three DD's and none of them have had any noted disease other then the measly measles and grumpy mumps which we were encouraged to catch at parties with other children:)

Lot of interesting things going on in the cancer reasearch field right now tho:)

About 4,000 DC are diagnosed with leukaemia in UK every year, the vast majority with ALL

Understanding how this disease works is surely going to help find a care. Researchers aren't gods, but what they are discovering about the roles of bacteria and the gut biome in this condition may well re not to others.

I was reading somewhere not so long ago about faecal transplants (which sound revolting) to 'reset' the biome. I suspect that it's not an uncommon angle in the study to disease processes.

MrsTerryPratcett I'd love some book recommendations if the OP doesn't mind. I always feel undereducated on science topics...

@FuzzyShadowChatter my lovey namesake Sir Terry Pratchett wrote a really accessible book called Science of the Discworld which is about everything from the Big Bang onwards!

Also I like Bad Science by Ben Goldacre for debunking crap science.

And Freakonomics for using statistics and understanding what silly conclusions you can come to.

I love Richard Dawkins but he's not exactly beginner level. Good for evolution.

I'm sure my fellow nerds have favourites too.