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Canada Medicine Idle Science

Look At Sick People To Give Your Immune System a Boost 271

Scientists at the University of British Columbia have found that looking at someone who appears sick boosts your immune system. Subjects had blood taken before and after watching a 10-minute slide show that contained disturbing images including people who appeared sick. Results of the blood tests showed people who had seen the sick people had a stronger immune system. From the article: "In the study, young adults were asked to watch a 10-minute slide show containing a series of unpleasant photographs. Some pictures included people who looked obviously ill in some way. The subjects' blood samples were then tested for levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a substance produced by the immune system that indicates your immune system is ramping up to more aggressively fight infection. As a control, pictures of people brandishing guns were also used on some participants—and they barely resulted in a significant increase in IL-6 production, signifying that IL-6 production is not simply a reaction to stress."

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Look At Sick People To Give Your Immune System a Boost

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  • by Mister Whirly ( 964219 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @01:25PM (#31750492) Homepage
    Really? because I have been a gun owner for about 15+ years and my guns have never maimed or killed anyone. Maybe I should return them for a refund??

    I enjoy target shooting. I don't even hunt, and have never shot at a live animal or human being before. I bought MY guns for the sole purpose of shooting at cardboard targets. So to be honest, it is YOUR opinion that is twisted - if you think the only purpose for guns is killing or harming other human beings, that says a lot more about your psychological profile than anything. And if you can point to any case where a gun killed somebody by itself, with no additional human interaction, I will eat all of my guns. You see, people kill people. There was murder and violence (and a lot more of it) before there were guns. Given the choice, would you rather be run through by a sword and die slowly, or be shot by a gun and die quickly??
  • by BobMcD ( 601576 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @02:11PM (#31751364)

    Oh, and guns DO NOT kill people.... it's the person holding the gun that kills people.

    Which is nothing more than a cute attempt at trying to deflect the fact that the sole purpose of a gun is to maim and or kill people.

    This doesn't seem to be true on its face. You could modify the tail of the statement to include animals and you'd be okay, but you're specifically omitting this.

    To make your statement true, you'd need to assume that guns were created to serve the needs of modern society. They weren't. The first projectile weapons were designed for harvesting animals from the wild. Animals, being faster and more wary than humans, needed to be killed at range. Humans, not so much. However, even in the traditional human-only weapons you'll find examples of converted tools. Swords are really just big knives, axes were used to work wood initially, etc. Now it is true that the first guns were probably cannons used on things like castles and the like, but the concept of propelling a solid object to collide with something and harm it had been long established beforehand. A world that would invent this concept only for killing humans is one where you can buy your food at a grocery store. This isn't where the gun comes from, historically speaking.

    A gun is a tool just like any other. Using your line of assessment, one could look at online pornography and conclude that the computer was invented solely for this purpose. You could do that, but only by ignoring history.

  • by somersault ( 912633 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @02:46PM (#31751926) Homepage Journal

    I dunno.. the video of the actual experiment [youtube.com] seems to indicate otherwise.

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