“Alpha-gal syndrome is triggered when a tick bite causes a person’s immune system to develop an allergic reaction to meat, including beef, pork or lamb.”

    • rmrf@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Ah yes, no concern for a poorly understood disease because its better known effect “doesn’t scare me”

      Where have we heard this before

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I mean there are a lot of problems with corporate agriculture being sidestepped here.

    • forkDestroyer@infosec.pub
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      6 days ago

      The world would improve greatly if vegan or vegetarian food had better marketing around quick and easy prep time.

    • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Real talk: you remember in the ninties when everyone started looking into agriculture in regards to cleanliness and not using sick animals and animal welfare?

      After thirty years of ag gag laws and deregulation, that situation may not have improved.

      You can eat meat if you want to. I recommend a cooking thermometer.

      I’ll have well cooked meat occasionally, but I am not just eating marketing. If I eat meat I know it’s junk food and that it absolutely has to come to temperature.

      Sort of like abstinence education, wrap it up folks you don’t want to know where that thing has been.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      They wouldnt be too smart if they were, because it’s not a meat allergy, it’s an alpha -galactose allergy, which is a sugar present in most mammals that people eat, but also many other foods, like carageenan, which is in many vegan products and medicine.

      • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Nothing our little genetic engineering lab can’t fix, crispr is so cheap this days. Ugh, their lab I mean, their hypothetical lab.

    • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone
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      6 days ago

      I got fucked up by a paralysis tick. My throat swelled to the point I almost could not breathe. Was staying with friends in a remote rural area. Emergency services said It was too far to bother sending an ambulance. My friends were given a phone number to call if I stopped breathing. They would be instructed on how to give me a tracheotomy if that happened. Luckily for me it didn’t.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 days ago

      it’s been very well known anywhere within a few states of texas for like a decade, and it’s definitely spreading. The US government needs to get it’s shit together and then wipe that tick off the face of the map the same way they were handling the screw worm flys and the mosquitoes that carry west nile and the other ones that carry dengu fever.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Imo I think these ticks are cooking and we should breed them and release them into high beef consumption districts.

        • forkDestroyer@infosec.pub
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          6 days ago

          Put active effort into educating and making animal free food outcompete meat-based meals

          Become a bioterrorist that doesn’t pay mind to accidentally killing kids (and adults) who suddenly get a life ending allergic reaction when having a meal cooked or cross contaminated with any animal product

          “Which way, animal ally man?”

          • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Obviously I was being sarcastic. I don’t actually believe we should be spreading ticks around, they can transmit other diseases as well. You could also get the same effect by injecting people with alpha gal.

            But while we’re here lets have some fun:

            shitpost

        • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Idk if they were just biting people maybe, but I can’t help but wonder what effect removing carnivores would have. Education would be better.

          • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            I think the main problem is that corporate agriculture has already sidestepped the problem by creating genetically modified animals that don’t have the alpha gal molecules.

            If I remember correctly alpha gal isn’t present in humans so our immune system can be programmed to use it as an immune target. Most mammals have the molecule present on cells so if their thymus is functioning correctly they shouldn’t be able to develop an immune response to it.

    • forkDestroyer@infosec.pub
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      6 days ago

      Iirc there is a good follow up episode on this as well from Radiolab.

      Wild that no one believed it at first. Short amount of time for this to change, eh?

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I really liked the follow up. Yeah it was the alpha gal free pigs. They did a good job

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    My friend literally refuses to go above the Mason-Dixie line because he might get bitten by a tick and get an allergy to red meat.

    • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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      7 days ago

      Would be a shame if this ended up in the water supply

      It certainly would. It’s not a meat allergy, it’s an alpha-galactose allergy. Alpha-gal is present in all foods and ingredients made from beef, pork, lamb, venison, rabbit, and other mammal sources, including gelatin and milk. Certain seaweeds also contain alpha-gal, along with most Vegan product alternatives. Alpha-gal is found worldwide among the inactive ingredients and materials of medications and healthcare products, and it is generally not required to be labelled.

      Based on the snarky tone, I have to assume you’re one of the vocal vegans that people hate because of the superiority complex that exudes from even simple comments like this. You should probably do a basic amount of research before commenting and proving you haven’t done any.

      • naught@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        You read the parent comment as completely serious and used it to rail against an assumed or imagined vegan boogeyman. Sounds tongue in cheek to me. I’m still waiting to see this “obnoxious vegan” everyone’s talking about. I know they exist, but all I see are angry meat eaters complaining about them

        • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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          6 days ago

          Go ahead and take a look at the vegan communities around the fediverse, don’t even need to go to the Reddit cesspool, they come along with everyone else… and let me know if they look like they’re not serious about that type of thing.

        • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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          7 days ago

          Holy hell, another one? I just found one of these creatures yesterday. My comments still reek of the responses to them.

      • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        That’s some pretty terrible assumption skills you got there, mate. I’ve seen stormtroopers with better precision than you.

        • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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          5 days ago

          That’s some pretty terrible assumption skills you got there, mate. I’ve seen stormtroopers with better precision than you.

          My assumption skills? You seem to have completely missed the point the scenes in Star Wars, despite there being quite a bit of evidence against that belief. Some people just want to believe misinformation when it reinforces what they want to believe, especially if it’s funny or seems to mean there’s a plot hole or error in a film. Star Wars has plenty of those… Stormtrooper aim isn’t one of them.

          Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader have a scene discussing letting them escape, because they planted a homing beacon on the Millenium Falcon. The Stormtroopers are avoiding hitting them specifically so the Millenium Falcon can escape and the Empire can follow it back to the Rebel base. Tarkin literally says he’s taking a risk, so he clearly instructed them to let the prisoners escape.

          https://www.starwars.com/video/an-awful-risk

          And that doesn’t even take into account several other comments from people through the films about Stormtrooper aim, including from Obi Wan who obviously was a General in the Republic Army and ostensibly knows what he’s talking about, and ignoring several scenes across the movies and shows where the Stormtroopers do fire accurately.

          • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
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            5 days ago

            I apologize for that. I made use of a unfair stereotype to make a cheap joke. Stormtroopers are capable, well trained military service men and women.

  • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    Do people on the east coast just not care about the diseases ticks carry? I feel like nobody is doing anything about ticks or the diseases. Back in the 80s they used to fly planes a few hundred feet over my house and open the back bay where a cloud of deet would come come pouring out. We’d stand out on the porch and watch and run inside before the cloud hit the ground. They did all that for mosquitoes.

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Turns out that horrific for the environment and it’s easier to just tell people to stop killing opossums.

      • village604@adultswim.fan
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        7 days ago

        Opossoms don’t really eat many ticks. The methodology of that study was flawed because they only fed them ticks.

        • Madison420@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          They are predators of mosquitoes and ticks, they aren’t supersoldiers of pest control like the study implies they are however a limiter in the ecosystem along with other animals people tend to kill and not think much about. It’s cheaper and easier to educate about not killing x than to eradicate a species and eat the consequences.

      • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social
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        7 days ago

        Well I used that as an example of the effort expensed not that it was a good solution. Similar to how opossums aren’t a solution. It’s been mentioned a number of times now they don’t help as much as first thought. Sounds like chickens or guinea fowl are better

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      so i googled alpha gal tick and this is the first map i found. it is not authoritative it came off social media. but i remember when the map didn’t include the west coast and lone star ticks were way further south.

      so that might be why they don’t care, because they don’t know they need to care.

    • GalacticRobot@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      They care, but there isn’t a ‘lot’ that can be done. These ticks range is expanding due to climate change, and even with proper precautions (sprays, clothing, monitoring) it still can happen. Lyme disease is a big thing in on the east coast, so they do know about ticks.

    • hactar42@lemmy.ml
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      5 days ago

      I’m in New England and there is not much we can do. I get my lawn sprayed monthly with natural cedar and peppermint stuff to help with it, but even if I used insane chemicals, I would be impossible to keep them out of my yard. I have so much wildlife running around they just get redeposited on a daily basis. I’m talking squirrels, rabbit, chipmunks, groundhogs, deer, and black bears. I just check my legs and my dog every time we come inside. Make sure she is current on Frontline and give her a supplement that helps keep them away.

  • BeUnique@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    Yeah, a lot of people are learning about this the hard way and it appears to only be getting worse! The tick population has seen a huge “uptick” in recent years!