Okay, Ohka keeps stating the same thing on various threads. The gist of it "Invasive species are not bad since they compete with native species and evolution will then take place. Even if it's an invasive species from ocean liner bilge water, that's okay too, since it was caused by human activity, and humans are natural (ie part of nature) so anything we do is natural"

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Ohka's logic leads to: Don't vaccinate. Since disease causing bacteria and viruses would be considered 'invasive species' then by your logic, we shouldn't be doing anything against them, since disease and potentially large outbreaks that might kill off whole populations of humans are okay becuase that would allow other species to move in and fill the ecological niches we left behind.

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And using your ocean liner logic, if some nutcase decided to morph HIV with the Flu and Ebola, the scientific community shouldn't try to do anything about it, since it was created by humans, and whatever humans do is natural.....even by creating/introducing invasive species.

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If you're vaccinated, you're a hypocrite, based on the gist of your argument. But of course, you'll probably argue that human life is more important...but then that's assigning 'good' and 'bad' (or 'worth less') to the life of a human vs all the other life forms out there. So why is okay to try to eradicate polio but not kudzu?

Hey Hemlock interesting argument.

I am an immunologist so this happens to be fun area for me. First off I am vaccinated. But, again it is a matter of perception. Personally, I don’t want to get sick so I get vaccinated, but whether I get sick or not is not good or bad in terms of biology.

Your analogy to the human body is a great one. There have been many invading organisms for a long time which we have co-evolved to tolerate. The common cold is a good example, multiple herpes viruses (like EBV for most of us) as well were much more virulent when we first encountered their “invasion” but via co evolution they cause most of us little harm. Our genome is full of odd bits and pieces of old retroviruses that integrated into our genome most likely HIV will end up there too at some point, this is not unlike a species finding its way to an island like Hawaii, dominating for awhile an then becoming part of the ecosystem.

I think the best support for my idea using your analogy is the “hygiene hypothesis”. Immunologist discovered fairly recently that people in industrialized nations have a higher instance of allergies and allergic disease like asthma. The immunological response that is responsible for allergies and asthma is a response that had evolved to combat intestinal worms and other large parasites. Because most people in industrialized countries are not infected with parasitic worms their immune response is more likely to become dysregulated. This is because the worms (invader) had co evolved with the host over time an now the worms actually help regulate the immune system. Now we actually use infection with intestinal worms to treat some autoimmune diseases like Crohns disease! So we thought it was a good idea to keep worms out of our bodies, never thinking that they may actually help us.

This example demonstrates how invaders can become integral parts of their environment over time. Evolution works on both invader and hosts to achieve an equilibrium. As they say in immunology and parasitology, killing the host is bad business. For invasive species it is also not their best interest to devastate ecosystem and over time (like the worms and the first herpes viruses) they will evolve to be less destructive and those around them will evolve to combat them.

My point is not to do nothing vs do something against invasive species, but to acknowledge that most often we don't really know what is best and to pretend to is arrogant and possibly as disruptive as bilge water.

And I would never argue that human life is more important. My arguments here are quite the opposite. All of this want to destroy "invasive species" is ultimately a decision on what organism is more important. I argue that they are all equally important, invaders are just as worthy of life as the natives.

Correct me if I am wrong but the Weinstein study did not include a control. Thus it may be very possilbe that the it was a placebo effect especially since the "improvement" was based on journal entries. It would appear that the Crohn's patients were periodically given something to drink which contained the Helminths. Based on comments made it certainly did not appear that even the experimental was blind; i.e., the experimenters knew what the experiment and the expected outcome was.

You created a construct called evolution to validate the worm experiment. In reality all the experiment may have shown (but far from proven) was that the worms remediated the Crohn's disease. The experiment did not even address the issue of what caused the Crohn's disease. Outside of invoking a reference to evolution, there is no evidence that what you speculate is true. Another agent may be responsible for it. Your argument is fallacious when examined reducto ad absurdum by saying people who eat mold fruit (containing penecillium) do not get bacterial infections. Bacterial infections are not caused by the absence of mold. Duh. However, since Weinstein's DOE was so shabby, short and small, there may be negative implications to long term control of Crohn's with worms. It was unclear to me if the people were regularly dewormed or only at the end. Nor was it clear if control of the Crohn's continued significantly after deworming.

Not eliminating gut worms has huge health implications in itself. Ever see a worm take up residence in the eye? Not pretty. Somehow, try to remember in your Walden Pond approach to human health, that Thoreau lived 2 miles from the center of Concord and regularly borrowed items which he needed to sustain his back to nature lifestyle. He even admittted in his writings that he was (dare I say it) a parasite on society.