Saturday, June 23, 2012

[fgbvdenq] Ticks and Red Meat Allergy

The bite of a "Lone Star Tick" can induce a life-long allergy to beef, pork, and other red meat.

Ecoterrorism: infect hotels, restaurants (especially meat-serving), lounges.

A parent could deliberately infect a child to enforce a cultural prohibition of not eating pork.  Can the shellfish allergy also be artificially induced?

What other allergies are caused bug bites?  Have nefarious people been at work artificially inducing these allergies in the broad population?

How long has this been going on?  Hundreds, or thousands, of years?  If so, it's surprising it hasn't been noticed until now.  If recent, what caused it?

Are some people immune?  Given the prevalence of ticks in some places, and the popularity of red meat, one would expect this allergy to be more common.  If immune, what is the mechanism for the immunity?

Is it a coincidence, or is there an evolutionary advantage for ticks to induce a red meat allergy?

Assuming 30,000 proteins to test for, isolate the allergy-inducing protein by binary search (15 tests on the willing Mr. Grisham. Update: the answer is a carbohydrate galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose.).  Genetically modify cows and pigs so as not to produce that protein (in its allergy-causing form).

The ecoterrorist strikes back, genetically modifying ticks and spreading them.

Why is A Resource on the Mammalian Meat Allergy from the University of Virginia not hosted within the virginia.edu domain? Does the university want to distance itself from this research?

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