This is something I heard my
parents and
grandparents say several times
when I was a child. Working on some kind of vaguely-understood
idea that
antibodies were produced as a response to
infection of the
body, they decreed that paying too much attention to
hygiene was not only
pointless but
counter-productive. As a result, if I as a
child dropped
my
ice lolly (
popsicle) on the ground, it would just be
dusted off and
shoved back into my
mouth.
And you know what, it worked. As a kid I
not only seemed to catch fewer diseases than most of the other children
my age, but when I did go down with the obligatory dose of mumps or
rubella it seemed to last for a shorter time than many others in my
age group.
Now I know that this could be purely coincidence, as there have always been
children who are "sickly" and those who seem to have a
cast-iron constitution. One thing, however, is certain. Nearly all
scientists who have investigated the anti-bacterial-resistant so-called
"superbugs" such as MRSA say the reason that these microbes have
become so widespread in recent years is down to overuse of
anti-bacterial products. The modern western obsession with hygiene is
slowly but surely killing us all by speeding up the natural selection
process and creating organisms which we have no way of fighting.
Obviously the solution isn't to refuse to clean our houses or wash our
bodies, but maybe people ought to bear in mind that soap or
non-soap based washing products are perfectly adequate: there's no need
to smother your skin in anti-bacterial products. Equally with
food preparation: unless you're in a commercial environment making
hundreds of meals a day, then ordinary cleanliness is sufficient to stop
infections occurring. Double-washing every last utensil in bacteria-killing
stuff not only smacks of the neurotic but is also helping those few
bacteria with antibiotic-resistant genes to survive and multiply.