I've had a soft spot for medical "kooks" with solid data ever since I was at a medical conference almost thrity years ago where Barry Marshall was hooted at for proposing that bacteria were the cause of stomach and duodenal ulcers. While a non-physician, I had a pretty good grounding in stats and his data looked good. He susequently won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2005.
The kook--Jaroslav Flegr--in the article below proposes that the protozoan parasite carried in cat feces called
Toxoplasma gondii (
T. gondii or Toxo) is potentially responsible for as many human deaths as malaria and that it causes subtle but measurable--and consistent--changes in the behavior of infected humans.
Leading parasitologists at Stanford, the Imperial College, etc. skeptically reproduced his studies and found that he just may be right.
Researchers around the world are finding correlations between Toxo infection and automobile accidents (toxo infection affects attention span and reaction rates), schizophrenia (the parasite appears to be able to rewire the brain's neurons and it also secretes dopamine--WTF?--and antipsychotic drugs seem to work by suppressing dopamine production...maybe reversing the infection's effects?), social isolation (infected males present as rumpled, suspicious, and anti-social), and...well read the article. It's longish but a good read.
Ten percent of Americans are infected and up to 50% of the French. You were wondering about the French angle.
It appears that human infection can be caused by eating bloody-rare and raw red meat (cows and pigs have high infection rates), which apprently the Frech do a lot of. Who knew.
The Atlantic -- How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy
Damn cats. Get a dog.
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