Genetically modified cow to give milk which doesn’t cause allergic reaction

From Ian Sample, in The Guardian:

Click on image above to go to the Guardian story.

“A genetically modified cow whose milk lacks a substance that causes allergic reactions in people has been created by scientists in New Zealand.

In their first year of life, two or three in every hundred infants are allergic to a whey protein in milk called BLG. The researchers engineered the cow, called Daisy, to produce milk that doesn’t contain the protein.

Tending the body’s microbial garden

One of the arguments for raw milk is that bacteria are not all bad, as some germ theorists might seem to imply. It’s about time science took note of the role of beneficial bacteria in maintaining and enhancing bodily health.

From Carl Zimmer, in the New York Times:

“For a century, doctors have waged war against bacteria, using antibiotics as their weapons. But that relationship is changing as scientists become more familiar with the 100 trillion microbes that call us home — collectively known as the microbiome.

“I would like to lose the language of warfare,” said Julie Segre, a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute. “It does a disservice to all the bacteria that have co-evolved with us and are maintaining the health of our bodies.”

This new approach to health is known as medical ecology. Rather than conducting indiscriminate slaughter, Dr. Segre and like-minded scientists want to be microbial wildlife managers.

Get dirty and avoid vaccinations…

From Dr. Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post:

“We can’t suggest we become dirtier and expose our children to more bacteria,” said Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Montreal Children’s Hospital. Our determination to prevent disease may lead to more allergies, he believes, but if so, it would be worth it. “If the price of having fewer allergies is more infection, I don’t know any parent who would expose their child to more infection.”

Dr. Ben-Shoshan, lead author of a study just published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, is both wrong and wrong-headed. Wrong because parents in their thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, willingly expose their children to infection. Wrong-headed because he has no basis to assert that dirt and bacteria hurt children more than they help them. Evidence abounds to the contrary.

The protective effect of raw milk on asthma in children — Gabriella study

From PressTV.com:

Photo via PressTV.com

“Children who drink raw milk are at a significant lower risk of developing asthma and allergies than those consuming safer pasteurized version.

Researchers from Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel interviewed a group of European parents about their children’s milk consumption while collecting 800 milk samples from the participants’ households, Reuters reported.