Return of the Black Death
The Berlin Wall in tablet form, human home brewery, and plague returns to China – plus, could food shortages end the taboo against cannibalism?
REPURPOSING THE BERLIN THE WALL
Ainsworths of Marylebone, London, the homeopathic pharmacist that has held a Royal warrant since 1980, sells tablets made from ground-down fragments of the Berlin Wall, charging £5.25 for a one-gram vial of lactose tablets and £114 for 500ml in liquid potency (23 per cent alcohol). The “remedy” is made by grinding down pieces of the Cold War relic and diluting it multiple times with lactose, water and alcohol. Said to convey a “spiritual force” capable of “breaking down walls” between people, the tablets or tincture are alleged to be effective in the treatment of asthma, headaches, aggression, depression, and insomnia. Professor Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of contemporary medicine at Exeter University, said the tablets were “not only bonkers but ineffective.” Another critic asked: “What therapeutic advantage does Berlin Wall have over ordinary garden wall, or Spaghetti Junction concrete?” The Prince of Wales is patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy. telegraph.co.uk, 20 Aug; D.Mail, 21+22 Aug 2019
AUTO-BREWERY SYNDROME
A 46-year-old American construction worker started producing beer in his own gut after a fungal growth produced high levels of yeast. His rare condition was only discovered in 2014 after he was pulled over by police on suspicion of drink driving in North Carolina. Hospital tests showed a blood-alcohol level of 200mg/dL, equivalent to consuming 10 alcoholic drinks, five times over the drink-drive limit, although he denied he had drunk any alcohol. The strange symptoms of autobrewery syndrome (ABS) are described in the British
Medical Journal. Researchers reveal how the once healthy, light social drinker began experiencing all the effects of alcoholism despite becoming teetotal. The man first began experiencing uncharacteristic episodes of depression, “brain fog” and aggressive behaviour in 2011 after taking a course of antibiotics for a thumb injury.
The true cause of his symptoms only became apparent years later, following his arrest for suspected drink driving. After being discharged from hospital, the man sought treatment at an Ohio clinic where a stool sample revealed the presence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (aka brewer’s yeast) and a related fungus. An apparent cure was affected by anti-fungal therapies and probiotics to treat the gut micro-flora. We are told that there have only been five cases of ABS in the last 30 years. D.Telegraph, D.Mail, 22 Oct 2019.
BLACK DEATH BACK
At least three people in China are being treated for plague. It’s the second time the disease, the same one that caused the Black Death in the 14th century, has been detected in the region – in May, a Mongolian couple died from the disease after eating the raw kidney of a marmot, a local folk health remedy. The first two recent patients, from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, were diagnosed with pneumonic plague by doctors in Beijing. The third victim, a 55-year-old hunter, fell ill with bubonic plague on 5 November after killing and eating a wild rabbit, and was being treated in the city of Huade.
Plague is caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria and transmitted through flea bites and infected animals. A 2018 study suggested it’s not just rats that are responsible – the mediaeval Black Death may have spread by human fleas and body lice. The disease can develop in three different forms. Bubonic plague causes swollen lymph nodes; septicaemic plague infects the blood; and pneumonic plague infects the lungs. Pneumonic is the most virulent and damaging; left untreated, it is always fatal.
The last know major outbreak in China was in 2009, when several people died in the town of Ziketan in Qinghai province on the Tibetan plateau. From 2010 to 2015, more than 3,248 cases of plague were reported worldwide, including 584 deaths. The three most endemic countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and Peru. In the US, there have been anywhere from a few to a few dozen cases
of plague every year. In 2015, two people in Colorado died, and the year before there were eight reported cases in the state. Having caused close to 50,000 human cases during the past 20 years, the plague is now categorised by the World Health Organisation as a reemerging disease.
There is currently no effective vaccine, but modern antibiotics can prevent complications and death if given quickly enough. However, a strain of bubonic plague with high-level resistance to the antibiotic streptomycin, which is usually the first-line treatment, was seen recently in Madagascar. Untreated bubonic plague can turn into pneumonic plague, which causes rapidly developing pneumonia, after bacteria spread to the lungs. [CNN] 13 Nov; D.Mail, 19 Nov; D.Telegraph, 20 Nov 2019. 2019.
SHOULD WE EAT EACH OTHER?
At a talk at the Gastro Summit in Stockholm last September, Swedish behavioural scientist Magnus Söderlund posed a controversial question: Can you imagine eating human flesh? As global temperatures continue to rise, the consequences for agriculture could cause food to become scarce, which might force humans to consider alternative forms of nourishment. Those sources might include insects like grasshoppers or worms, but they could also include corpses, Söderlund said. By gradually getting accustomed to the taste of our own flesh, he added, humans might come to view cannibalism as less taboo. “I’d be open to at least tasting it,” Söderlund later told the State Swedish Television channel TV4. In less than a decade, the world could fall short of feeding every person on the planet by 214 trillion calories per year, or about 28,000 calories per person.
The idea of using cannibalism to supplement our food supply isn’t new. Think of the 1973 dystopian thriller, Soyent Green. In 2018, Richard Dawkins wondered if it would be possible to grow meat from harvested human cells in a laboratory. Like Söderlund, he called the idea “an interesting test case” that might demonstrate whether humans could overcome the “yuck” factor in order to do something they considered moral, like reduce greenhousegas emissions.
There are, however, many less grotesque ways to ensure we have enough food in the future. A recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that a quarter of all food worldwide is lost or wasted. By improving the way food is harvested, stored, packaged, and transported, the report said, producers could address food shortages. businessinsider. com, 13 Sept 2019.