Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Wednesday, 2 January 2019

"Rope worms" - new to me, but not to 'science'

Edit: 3 Jan 2019 - I've now created a new 'stub' page on Wikipedia for Rope worms.

I have been reading about ropeworms or rope worms which are in reality parts of the gut lining that have sloughed off and been pooed out. They can be quite large and arise because people are taking fake treatments (such as MMS* bleach enemas) to remove these 'gut parasites' in the hope of curing diseases or conditions (such as autism).

In fact the enemas would appear to be simply creating the rope worms by stripping parts of the gut lining away.

There are two papers that have been published on uploaded to ArXiv which argue that these ropeworms might be a new species of human gut parasite, a notion which has been strongly refuted (and laughed at) by Science Based Medicine and also several people answering a question about rope worms on Quora.

It's absolute nonsense and not an "anaerobic helminth". For an added bonus the 'worms' have also been given the name "funis vermis" in one of the papers. This would be funny if people weren't giving bleach enemas to children with autism with the intention of 'removing' these 'parasites' from the gut. People are awful.

For lots of revolting pictures of gut linings relabelled as worms have a look at this PDF.

*MMS = Miracle Mineral Solution / Supplement aka Master Mineral Solution (aka sodium chlorite, chlorine dioxide solution, aerobic oxygen) is a form of bleach which is sold as a claimed cure-all for all sorts of things, including autism. More info from the UK's Food Standards Agency. As of 2016 MMS is also been banned (by HPRA) for sale in Ireland.




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