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Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa
SoyChemist writes "Ciguatoxin causes bizarre neurological symptoms including temperature reversal, a burning sensation, and an imaginary feeling of loose teeth. It is produced by algae and accumulates in the fatty flesh of tropical fish. While traveling to the tropics, a man from England ate some bad seafood that contained the unusual poison. His story, and the tale of some unfortunate sailors of an earlier age who suffered the same affliction, appeared in the current issue of Practical Neurology and was summarized on the Wired Science Blog. Both the Wired blog and the peer-reviewed journal neglected to mention that the potent neurotoxin has been made from scratch by organic chemists."
It would be great if we found a way to selectively "switch" some receptors. Like, when people suffer from burns to ease their pain. Or maybe in a deodorant that tells your skin it's freezing so you don't sweat in the first place.
The former I'm not too sure about (whether it works or is even a good idea), the latter sounds silly to me, so what could we make out of that? I'm usually not someone asking for applications for a discovery to be "useful", but this is intriguing. Anyone got an idea what to do with that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Given the state of our NHS and the mythical availability of dental treatment, I wouldn't put the blame for any feeling of loose teeth down to poison alone...
Why is the assumption always that
Either you are new to
Personally, I have enjoyed the odd view some of my fellow
Enjoy the moment, we have so few.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
I agree. Why isn't there a torrent site for academic papers? Lack of interest? Hopefully I spur some interest. Besides the point, why not just link us to wikipedia instead?
I always enjoy reading stories like this where some interesting or subtle medical effect is at work. It evokes images of proactive doctors working closely with patients to really understand their problems and symptoms, delving deep into the pathology of whatever condition they are complaining about. But in my experience, typical doctors in the US are not in the least bit interested in actually studying medical conditions that come across their desk (or, more appropriately, forwarding the situation on to a research pathologist). They usually have a pragmatic "if it hurts when you do that, then don't do that" or "if you are bleeding, I can help you but otherwise you are on your own" attitude. If I came to my doctor and said "hot and cold are reversed after I ate some shellfish," I'm pretty sure the response would be "then don't eat it next time, it just happens to some unlucky people. Drink some water, get some rest, it will go away in a month. That will be $200. Next!" In fact, I'm pretty sure the discussion of shellfish wouldn't even come up because the conversation never seems to get as far as that. I speak with some experience here because I have suffered from a couple of unusual (but not deadly) medical conditions. The response is always the same: "some unlucky people just have that and we don't know why. Have a nice day." Is it something I ate? Something I did? Something in my physiology? Something genetic? "We don't know. Have a nice day." But wouldn't they want to know? I blame this intellectual laziness on HMOs, which tend to put otherwise motivated doctors in a terrible bind. If a doctor wants to do some test to study an unusual condition, they have to justify it to a big business that will determine if the procedure was "necessary." If the procedure is deemed unnecessary but is done anyway, then the patient gets stuck with the bill. If the patient defaults, then the doctor must pay out of pocket. Such procedures are usually very expensive and doctors who do informative procedures that the HMO deems "unnecessary" (even if they are totally legitimate) can easily go bankrupt. In short, there is no motivation for doctors under HMOs to go the extra mile to really understand the cases they are studying in detail.
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