Study: Seals Infected Early Americans With Tuberculosis 74
mdsolar writes that a study suggests that tuberculosis first appeared in the New World less than 6,000 years ago and it was brought here by seals. After a remarkable analysis of bacterial DNA from 1,000-year-old mummies, scientists have proposed a new hypothesis for how tuberculosis arose and spread around the world. The disease originated less than 6,000 years ago in Africa, they say, and took a surprising route to reach the New World: it was carried across the Atlantic by seals. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, has already provoked strong reactions from other scientists. "This is a landmark paper that challenges our previous ideas about the origins of tuberculosis," said Terry Brown, a professor of biomolecular archaeology at the University of Manchester. "At the moment, I'm still in the astonished stage over this."
Africa man... (Score:3, Funny)
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African tribes don't go to war against each other?
Re:Africa man... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously? The chance to cause global disasters and a million war deaths (by the most off-the-wall-extreme measures [owni.eu] for the US's war on terror) and the like are not preferable to Africa's situation?
Let me count some of the tragedies in recent years in Africa.
I'm not arguing that first world countries are utopias but to claim Africa has it better or is doing things better is silly on the face of it.
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I think s/he is trying to make a point that African crises are largely confined to Africa. They haven't started any world wars, operated oppressive colonies in remote places, etc.
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I think s/he is trying to make a point that African crises are largely confined to Africa.
Yes, because nasty shit like this, and the things that follow it, ALWAYS stay contained!
Not to mention that it's just shrugging off the sheer misery happening over the entire continent...
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They haven't started any world wars, ...
It is not rational to give moral credit to people for not doing something which they were incapable of doing. Africans didn't colonize remote places because they were morally superior, but because they never developed any real civilization. Well, the Egyptians did, but sub-Saharan Africa has always been primitive, lacking the technology and social organization needed to explore the world.
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Yes, Africa had a meeting 6001 years ago where all the tribes agreed on that.
(Africa is imho the least likely continent to cause global disasters, a few diseases because people live in poverty is hardly comparable to the wars and suffering caused by most 1st-world nations)
A few diseases? Well, that's rather delusional.
Go ahead and pit mankinds bloodlust for warfare against the 500 million that died of Polio. Spanish Flu? Throw another 100 million on the death toll fire. I can't even amass the numbers from The Plague. Thousands still die from it every year.
Chalk up another 30 million to AIDS.
And last but certainly not least, we have Africa to thank for such wonders as Ebola, which we can only hope and pray someone doesn't get stupid enough to try and weaponize that basta
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You have forgotten the worst illness of all. Homo Sapiens. Its a parasite when it lives in its home, and tries not to destroy it. Its an illness when it lives without even caring for anything except for itself, not even recognizing the long term disadvantage it can endure by heavily damaging its host. Lets hope the illness becomes a parasite, and don't kill itself by phenomena called "third world war".
Joe Rogan fan, eh? So you're here to eat the sandwich too then.
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If you want to claim that you are nothing more than a parasite feel free to do so. Also realize that you have the ability to eradicate yourself.
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a few diseases because people live in poverty is hardly comparable to the wars and suffering caused by most 1st-world nations)
...until a disease gets well enough established that it can no longer be controlled and spreads across the world. For example, could Ebola become a global threat?
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For example, could Ebola become a global threat?
Probably not unless it evolves to be more easily transmissible like the flu.
But but... (Score:5, Funny)
She told me she was a mermaid!!
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She didn't say no.
Because she was a seal.
Re: But but... (Score:1)
Ar Ar Ar means Ar Ar Ar.
Sexual assault is a crime.
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:And seals never leave a man behind."
I think thats Army Rangers
Re:But but... (Score:5, Funny)
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On a related note: if someone offers to have sex with you in a bucket of fish, dive in.
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if someone offers to have sex with you in exchange for a bucket of fish, run.
Wait... who's offering whom the fish here?
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Glenn Yarbrough, The Mermaid Song.
Don't go swimming with a mermaid son, if you don't know how to swim.
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Tag #WhereIsTheFuckingPaper (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, here it is: Pre-Columbian mycobacterial genomes reveal seals as a source of New World human tuberculosis [nature.com] (Paywall -- free Nature summary article here [nature.com]).
Modern strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the Americas are closely related to those from Europe, supporting the assumption that human tuberculosis was introduced post-contact. This notion, however, is incompatible with archaeological evidence of pre-contact tuberculosis in the New World. Comparative genomics of modern isolates suggests that M. tuberculosis attained its worldwide distribution following human dispersals out of Africa during the Pleistocene epoch, although this has yet to be confirmed with ancient calibration points. Here we present three 1,000-year-old mycobacterial genomes from Peruvian human skeletons, revealing that a member of the M. tuberculosis complex caused human disease before contact. The ancient strains are distinct from known human-adapted forms and are most closely related to those adapted to seals and sea lions. Two independent dating approaches suggest a most recent common ancestor for the M. tuberculosis complex less than 6,000 years ago, which supports a Holocene dispersal of the disease. Our results implicate sea mammals as having played a role in transmitting the disease to humans across the ocean.
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I am not sure I believe their theory. It is also possible that people brought the disease to the new world. There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for human travel across the Atlantic by the Phoenicians and/or Romans. It is unlikely there was any regular trade, but over the centuries a few ships may have been blown off course, and made a one-way trip. For instance, the bottle gourd [wikipedia.org], which was used to store water on ships, crossed the Atlantic to Brazil right about that time. Most likely the se
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I am not sure I believe their theory. It is also possible that people brought the disease to the new world. There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for human travel across the Atlantic by the Phoenicians and/or Romans. It is unlikely there was any regular trade, but over the centuries a few ships may have been blown off course, and made a one-way trip. For instance, the bottle gourd [wikipedia.org], which was used to store water on ships, crossed the Atlantic to Brazil right about that time. Most likely the seeds were brought there on a ship.
That would be easy enough to test, provided we had archeological samples of Phoenicians / Romans who were infected with M. tuberculosis (Mtb). Then, one could do the same phylogenetic analysis done in the paper that claded with the seal / sea lion Mtb sequences. Of course, the sequence analysis data provided in the paper would probably argue against your hypothesis, as Mtb sequences obtained from infected members of those civilizations would probably clade with modern European Mtb sequences rather than with
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Cross-Species Migration (Score:2)
Germs don't care>
They're as fair as they can be, equal opportunity infection agents.
hehehe (Score:1)
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Just FYI; you don't catch tuberculosis by petting them.
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What about when they try to bite your hand off for assaulting them?
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But seals are sooooo cute!
Not all seals are cute. If you have a close encounter with a hungry leopard seal [nationalgeographic.com], you will not think it is so adorable.
No problem (Score:3)
We have already undertaken an effort to eradicate the seals. We have found that the most efficient means involves hunters with clubs.
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Come here little seal!
How unfair is Mother Nature that baby alligators do not promote the same level of empathy?
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Also in instruction manuals [photobucket.com] for lots of equipment.
Re:No problem (Score:5, Funny)
"Looks like you've blown a seal." "Just fix it and leave my personal life out of this."
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That is also the picture, that does not include a puppy
Young seals and young dogs are both pups.
or a kitten
Now I get it: a seal pup looks cute because it combines most of the appearance of a dog with the whiskers of a cat and even shorter legs than a dachshund or corgi.
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Now I get it: a seal pup looks cute because it combines most of the appearance of a dog with the whiskers of a cat and even shorter legs than a dachshund or corgi.
Indeed.
And those short legs sure seem to work to the seals' detriment when they go clubbing.
clubbing (Score:2, Funny)
We be clubbin' (Score:2)
Canada (Score:1)
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Canadian Club on the Rocks!
Since when (Score:2)
human canine transmission (Score:2)
How do you... (Score:3)
How do you change SEAL into COAT in just four moves?
SEAL :D
CLUB
CLUB
CLUB
COAT
*pre-Columbian humans* ... (Score:2)
look, I'm just going to drop in and say that there's a loose scientific consensus on all kinds of pre-Columbian contact with the Western Hemisphere
that said, it would be odd if it was seals not humans
pasteurize milk (Score:3)
. It shouldn't be a surprise that other animals could be a vector.
The pasteurization of milk didn't come into practice until the late 1800s. Back then, tuberculosis was commonly carried by milk. A low-temperature, long-time (LTLT) process, also known as batch pasteurization, was first developed to kill the tuberculosis pathogen. The incidence of tuberculosis contracted from milk fell dramatically, and in fact it no longer makes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's list of foodborne illnesses
TB or not TB (Score:2)
Consumption be done about it? Of cough, of cough.
It's not the cough that carries you off. It's the coffin they carry you off in.
Thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Obviously (Score:2)
The disease originated less than 6,000 years ago
Well duhhh. To be any older than that, it would have been around before the Earth existed.
Oblig. Monty Python (Score:2)
What's the nautical speed velocity of an unladen seal?
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What's the nautical speed velocity of an unladen seal?
Too sophisticated a question for me. I'm still working on what "speed velocity" is.