[ahayes]

The next thing to do is capture wild rats and raise them in captivity for a few generations.

I tend to think that the hygiene hypothesis is true. Nothing Lamarckian about it, just environmental effects on the immune system.

[Antonello]

I tend to think that the hygiene hypothesis is true. Nothing Lamarckian about it, just environmental effects on the immune system.

I stand corrected regarding invoking Lamarck in this case. It will be very interesting to see what will come out of more controlled studies such as the one you suggest.

[ansel12]

"I tend to think that the hygiene hypothesis is true. Nothing Lamarckian about it, just environmental effects on the immune system."


Service plumbing shops will tell you that service plumbers seem to have very few colds, flu etc.

[MarcusTulliusCicero]

Actually, the more valuable experiment is the one they're planning, which is to take the lab rats and place them in a more "natural" environment. They could then be compared to their genetically identical control lab rats that are still in the clean environment. This way, the genetic differences are eliminated, they can be age and sex matched and therefore any differences in the development of resistance to stimulation of the immune system could more confidently be claimed to be due to environmental factors.

As for Lamarck, epigenetics is starting to show the poor devil may not have been as wrong as has been thought!