http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12 ... e/09_10_catcoat.html?_r=1

I think this parasite proves that cats are more intelligent and evil than we first thought. Clearly this is biological warfare, they are trying to take over the planet and have a tasty snack at the same time.

I like cats.


This is fairly interesting - But people have been eaten by their pets before, when they die all alone and their pets can't get in or out, the animals have to eat something.

Stuff like this makes me love science.

Quote from brandons48 :

I like cats.

I like them even more now I know they might eat old people.

Quote :

Now, in a ground-breaking article to be published this April by the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Ewald and colleagues Levi G. Ledgerwood and Gregory M. Cochran argue that the cause of schizophrenia, the heartbreaking, family-destroying disease that affects 1 out of 100 Americans, or 2 million people, lurks in our own homes in the humble cat litter box.

On a Friday afternoon in April 2001, Ledgerwood, one of Ewald’s students at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, stepped around the piles of papers and journals in his professor’s office and handed him a study published a half century earlier. Ledgerwood had been tracking the literature on schizophrenia for two semesters.

He already knew that some researchers were finding strong associations between Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite behind toxoplasmosis, and schizophrenia. This germ is a distant relative of the one responsible for malaria, but rather than being transmitted by mosquito bites, it’s spread by cats who eat rodents. Mice who lick or eat things contaminated by cat droppings can be infected by the parasite, which moves into their brains and causes them to behave abnormally—staggering around, for example, so that they become easy prey.

The paper that Ledgerwood handed Ewald provided a clue to why the mice were acting so strangely. The authors tested schizophrenics for the presence of both Toxoplasma gondii and lysergic acid dieth-ylamide (LSD). Over half were infected with the parasite, and, of those, most tested positive for LSD. The production of LSD or an LSD-like compound in the infected patients strengthens the argument that this parasite causes schizophrenia and its related hallucinations.

The evidence for this theory was bolstered by the findings two years ago of schizophrenia researcher E. Fuller Torrey, director of the Stanley Medical Research Foundation at Johns Hopkins University. He and his colleagues discovered that almost half of their schizophrenic subjects tested positive for the parasite, versus about one in ten of the control group. They also noted that mothers of schizophrenics were almost five times more likely to be infected with the germ than other mothers were, suggesting transmission during pregnancy as a major route of infection.

In building their own case for the pivotal role of the parasite in schizophrenia, Ledgerwood, Ewald, and Cochran noted a few more clues. For instance, since toxoplasmosis can cause miscarriages and birth defects, pregnant women have been routinely advised not to keep cats as pets.

Also, schizophrenia has been more common among urbanites and people born in late winter and early spring. Knowing that toxoplasmosis is transmitted to humans via cat feces, Ewald found himself casting suspicious glances at the litter box in his home, which his cat uses primarily during the cold months of January through March. Whenever he heard the telltale scratching, he worried about what the cat might be tracking around the house.

The soon-to-be published paper written by Ledgerwood, Ewald, and Cochran lays out the evidence for the role of toxoplasmosis in schizophrenia. The authors believe that rather than being caused by genes or bad mothers, schizophrenia is the result of infection with this highly destructive pathogen.

If their analysis turns out to be correct, a way to prevent this illness may well be at hand. Although none has yet been approved, various vaccines to inoculate cats against the toxoplasmosis parasite have been tested in Brazil, France, Belgium, Japan, and the United States. Furthermore, in one experimental field study, vaccinating cats on six Illinois farms effectively broke the natural cycle of transmission. Now that the potentially serious effects of toxoplasmosis are being recognized, it’s time to speed up development of a vaccine.

Oh dear...

It's free LSD... how is that such a bad thing?

i was like but then i lol'd for this