A group of scientists has concluded that ancient Europeans drank milk for millennia despite the digestive problems it may have caused, casting doubt on theories on how humans evolved to tolerate it.
Scientists have long speculated that an enzyme needed to avoid any gastrointestinal discomfort developed rapidly in populations where domesticating dairy animals was prevalent.
People who could tolerate milk, that theory goes, gained a new source of calories and protein and passed on their genes to more healthy offspring than those without the genetic trait — known as lactase persistence — that allows themto digest the sugar in milk into adulthood.
But a new study has offered a radically different theory, arguing that side effects such as gas, bloating and intestinal cramps weren’t enough on their own to move the evolutionary needle on the genetic mutation.
“Prehistoric people in Europe may have started consuming milk from domesticated animals thousands of years before they evolved the gene to digest it,” the study’s authors said.
The study, published in the journal Nature, was produced in collaboration with more than 100 scientists across a range of fields including genetics, archaeology and epidemiology. The scientists mapped out estimated milk consumption in Europe from approximately 9,000 years ago to 500 years ago.
By analyzing animal fat residues in pottery from hundreds of archaeological sites, alongside DNA samples harvested from ancient skeletons, the researchers concluded that lactase persistence was not common until around 1,000 B.C., nearly 4,000 years after it was first detected.
And, rather than in times of abundance, they argue that it was during famine and epidemics that having the mutation became critical to survival: when undigested lactose could lead to serious intestinal illnesses and death.
Using archaeological records to identify periods where populations shrank, they concluded that people were more likely to drink milk when all other food sources had been exhausted, and that during those periods, diarrhea was more likely to escalate from a mild to a deadly condition.
George Davey Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Bristol, who teamed up with the researchers on an analysis of contemporary data on milk and lactase persistence in current populations, said the study raises “fascinating questions” about whether some people who believe they are lactose intolerant “might actually be fine if they drank milk.”
About a quarter of Americans are lactose intolerant. In a lawsuit filed last year, a group of American doctors asked why the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines recommend so much dairy — suggesting that the federal agency is looking out for the interests of the meat and dairy industries rather than the health of Americans.
USDA dietary guidelines are driven by milk marketing concerns — not nutrition — lawsuit alleges
Previous studies have suggested that populations had to rely heavily on dairy before individuals adapted to tolerate it in abundance. A smaller study in 2014 found the variation that allows humans to digest lactose didn’t appear in Hungarian DNA samples until 3,000 years ago, whereas it may have cropped up as far back as 7,000 years in places such as Ireland where cheesemaking became abundant.
Amber Milan, an expert in dairy intolerance at the University of Auckland, said the idea that the lactase mutation became important to survival only when Europeans began enduring epidemics and famines is a “sound theory” and “supported by previous research of drivers of genetic selection.”
She added, however, that she is not sure the new study “entirely rules out that widespread milk consumption was the evolutionary force behind lactose tolerance” — partly because the genetic data was collected from Biobank, a British biomedical database of genetic and health information from some 500,000 people.
The authors have also focused on the major European genetic variant for lactase persistence — which, while appropriate for this study, “does potentially miss other genetic variants that result in lactase persistence,” Milan said.
Twenty-six-year-old Jake Eberts agreed to drink a life-threatening concoction of a cloudy, salty liquid containing Shigella bacteria, which are usually found in the “poop” of people who are infected — all in the name of science.
He downed a shot-glass amount of the liquid, knowing it would produce a miserable case of dysentery for the sake of research, he told Insider.
Eberts was one of 16 healthy young adults participating in the 11-day inpatient trial at the University of Maryland in an attempt to test the effectiveness of a Shigella vaccine and received a payday in exchange.
Eberts said the symptoms from the trial resulted in the “worst eight hours of my life” — but would do it all again, if he was paid. For this trial, the university said he earned more than $7,000.
On April 5, Jake Eberts began his diarrhea-inducing journey with researchers.WHO
“I don’t want to make myself out to be Mother Teresa here — would not have done this for free. It’s a big ask to ask someone to get dysentery,” Eberts told Insider when he was discharged from the study. “The entire time, I was like, ‘Wow, this is an awful disease.’ And I just got really emotional, probably also because I was just delirious, about the thought of small children in the developing world dealing with this.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Shigella bacteria causes 600,000 deaths annually worldwide. While there is no vaccine available against the misery-causing bacteria, it’s the second-leading cause of diarrhea death, with the No. 1 killer being rotavirus, for which vaccines are available.
Sickness from Shigella is often caused by drinking contaminated water, eating ill-prepared food or coming in contact with someone’s infected bowel movements.
The Institut Pasteur in France has been working on a vaccine that was first tested in Israel.
Eberts was part of a Maryland study conducting further research. Scientists also collect data from young kids in Kenya who may come into contact with the bacteria, although they are not given deathly concoctions.
He took to Twitter to document his experience with the bacteria.Jake Eberts/ @wokeglobaltimes
If all goes well in the current phase-two trials, and the vaccine is effective and tolerated, it could be tested on a larger scale. But if the vaccine doesn’t provide at least 50% protection against severe disease, University of Maryland trial leader Dr. Wilbur Chen told Insider, “Then we will have a vaccine that really fails, unfortunately.” He’s hoping for 70% protection.
Eberts thought he had unluckily received placebo injections as part of the unvaccinated group in the trial, since he didn’t noticeably react to the shots — at first.
Unfortunately for him, he ended up having one of the worst cases of dysentery.
His symptoms started about 40 hours after drinking the bacteria, complete with cramps and chills at first. Then, he quickly took a turn for the worst. He had a 103-degree fever, diarrhea and bloody stool.
“I truly felt like I could not move,” Eberts said, calling basic daily movements like going to the bathroom a “Herculean effort.” “Every movement in the bathroom, to get up to wash my hands or to grab a paper towel, I would lie back down on the ground and just sit there for five minutes.”
While he joked around, Eberts was suffering from debilitating symptoms.Jake Eberts/ @wokeglobaltimes
Nurses gave him liters of rehydration solution — or “sad Gatorade,” as Eberts called it — which was a sweet and salty solution, with no delicious flavoring or color, meant to keep him functioning. Eventually, he was given the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, and within four hours, he began to improve, going from “death’s door” to feeling more alive with the ability to walk and talk “with a little bit of effort.”
“I was exhausted and felt miserable, but I didn’t feel fear,” he said. “I knew this is something I signed up for, and it will pass, and I’m not going to die or anything. But even if I had been just at home and had somehow come across this, I would’ve been terrified, because it was just awful. And the deterioration was so rapid.”
“If I did get the vaccine, that is really bad news for the vaccine,” he continued.
Since people with Shigellosis can infect others, trial participants were forced to stay inside and eat alone during the whole 11- to 12-day study. Even using the restroom was a multistep process, involving a special toilet “hat,” an accompanying nurse and some bleach.
While live-tweeting the experience, Eberts also began a fund-raiser to help provide clean water to other places.Jake Eberts/ @wokeglobaltimes
Eberts had to relieve himself in the toilet hat, place it in a biohazard bag and carry it down the hall to researchers who would extract samples from it. Once the nurses took what they needed for the study, he would pour the rest of his bodily waste into the toilet and douse it with bleach, waiting five minutes before flushing away.
Despite being an exhausting process, collecting patients’ waste played a vital role in testing how the vaccine works because measurements from stools, urine and blood helped researchers determine what kind of immune response the vaccine produced, Chen said.
Scientists analyzed the anti-Shigella IgA antibodies in the various excrements, logging the exact amount and type of cytokines that are in the patients’ stools.
“It is a way for us to be able to learn about the mechanisms of protection,” Chen continued.
At the end of the 11-day study, he still said he’d do it again if he was paid.Jake Eberts/ @wokeglobaltimes
When in intense isolation, Eberts used his time efficiently. Between fighting the bacteria and recovering, he raised more than $24,000 for the Water Project, which provides clean, safe water to communities around the world.
“Having had this absolutely awful disease — and recovered fairly quickly, thanks to access to medical care — I really, really would like to use my 15 minutes of Twitter fame to help prevent it elsewhere,” he wrote in the fund-raiser description.
He documented his experience on Twitter, beginning the day before the trial. “Tomorrow I am going to be deliberately infected with dysentery and kept in a quarantine facility for 11 days as part of a Phase IIc vaccine clinical trial,” he wrote. “That sounds dark but I assure you I am extremely excited to overshare this journey with everyone.”
Chen said Eberts’ tweets led to more people signing up to be in trials.Jake Eberts/ @wokeglobaltimes
Following Eberts’ barrage of live tweets, Chen said the center had “20- or 30-some people that signed up with interest.”
“I’ve been spending my career trying to tackle this, and it’s always a challenge to try to find willing volunteers,” Chen said. “He was just sharing from the heart, and I think people liked it.”
When asked, “Why the hell would you do this?,” Eberts wrote on Twitter, “3 reasons: 1, to help the less fortunate and advance modern medicine (read: to be smarmy and self-righteous); 2, I get paid enough money to basically cover rent for the rest of the year; 3, I get paid even if I don’t get dysentery.”
While Eberts can’t participate in another Shigella trial due to already being exposed to the bacteria, he’s willing to try a similar vaccine “challenge.”
“Some people go to soup kitchens to get their charity fix. This might be the way I do it,” he said.
Hundreds of migrants have been trying to cross into Poland from Belarus, where authorities appear to have facilitated their passage into the European Union country. Many have been stranded in the border area in freezing conditions.
Youssef Atallah, a 37-year-old Syrian, arrived in Poland recently after his third attempt at crossing from Belarus. Speaking at a refugee center in Białystok, he recalled how upon arriving at the border, Belarusian guards caught his group of four and he was beaten, leaving him with facial injuries, a broken nose and bruised ribs.
“They took us to the forbidden area. That was the first try to cross the border to Poland,” he told CNN. He said the officials refused to provide medical aid and repeatedly told them to head to Poland rather than return to the Belarusian capital Minsk. While making the treacherous journey, Atallah said he had no food and drank water from a swamp. He added, “I saw stuff left by another refugee group (and) I found a cube of sugar. I just start sucking on it because I can’t chew, I can’t bite or anything.”
One Syrian woman who CNN spoke to in recent weeks said she had flown from the Lebanese capital Beirut to Minsk. From there she alleges the Belarusian military helped her and a group of other migrants get to the border area and cut the border fencing.
When Polish police repeatedly pushed the group back, the woman said they begged Belarusian authorities for safe passage back to Minsk airport, so they could go back to their countries of origin. She said they refused.
The woman said she ended up trapped in the forest on the Belarusian-Polish border for 12 days before she was able to slip past Polish police and cross the border into Poland. From there, she made her way to Germany — the desired destination for many of the migrants — after hiring what she described as a “taxi” for $2,000.
Speaking to CNN several weeks ago from a refugee center in the German town of Eisenhuettenstradt, the woman, who asked not to be named, said: “I slept under a tree all the time. [The] first days we have a sleeping bag. [But] we lost everything when we walked [between] the trees.”
“Five days later we drink water from the floor. We don’t have anything, they didn’t help us,” she said. “We put a bottle on the floor … we drank water from puddles.”
“We cannot drink from it in the morning because it is black,” she said, choking back tears.
Thousands of stranded people between Poland and Belarus are caught at the center of an intensifying geopolitical dispute that has pitted the EU, the US and NATO against the Belarusian government. Western officials have accused Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko of manufacturing a migrant crisis on the EU’s eastern frontier to destabilize the bloc as retribution for sanctions over human rights abuses.
His government denies the claims, and instead blames the West for dangerous, sometimes fatal, border crossings and poor treatment of migrants.
The Polish border guard said it had recorded 468 crossing attempts by migrants on Wednesday, and nearly 600 the day before, including some “large-scale” efforts with groups of more than 100 people trying to breach the fence. Polish authorities have detained small numbers of people and immediately sent others back to Belarus.
Migrants who CNN has spoken to say they paid around $8,000 for their journey. “I went to Lebanon [from Syria]. From Lebanon, I went to the airport, on FlyDubai on a tourist visa to Belarus,” said 27-year-old Syrian migrant Mohammad Nassar.
“At the airport, they treat you like a tourist. There’s a hotel. But as soon as you go to the border village of Harodnia, they start to treat you very badly,” said Nassar. “For the last four days, we had no food. They gave us nothing. They only gave us water sometimes.”
Jino, a 17-year-old from northern Iraq, said the Belarusian military hauled her group into the back of a truck and transported them to the border.
“The Belarusians … sometimes they treated us bad, sometimes they treated us good,” said Jino, who did not disclose her surname for security reasons. “In my case, they brought us to the border in a truck … and they cut the [border] wire.”
The press officer for the Polish border guard, Katarzyna Zdanowicz, said the situation in the Kuznica area was calm on Wednesday and that migrants had received hot food and drinks from Belarusian servicemen overnight.
Zdanowicz put the number of migrants camped out along the border at around 4,000, citing border guard estimates. She did not rule out the possibility that more people were making their way towards the border area from other parts of Belarus. However, the Belarusian State Border Committee said Tuesday there were around 2,000 migrants at the scene.
Multiple Polish officials have accused Belarus of helping migrants in attempts to cross the border. Deputy Interior Minister Bartosz Grodecki told Polish media on Wednesday that migrants are “constantly transported to the border by the Belarusian services.”
Grodecki also alleged that “apart from the Belarusian services, there are probably also representatives of the Russian services” among the crowds of migrants.
On Thursday, Russia denied it was helping migrants get into Belarus.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan’s attorney general apologized Wednesday and said she drank too much booze before last month’s Michigan-Michigan State football game.
“I might be a terrible bartender,” Dana Nessel said.
Nessel told her story on Facebook, even posting a photo of herself slumped in a seat at Spartan Stadium on Oct. 30 with a Michigan hat covering her face.
Nessel, a Democrat, said she had two Bloody Marys on an empty stomach while attending a tailgate party. She joked that “as long as you put enough vegetables in them, it’s practically a salad.”
“I proceeded to go to the game … and started to feel ill. I laid low for a while, but my friends recommended that I leave so as to prevent me from vomiting on any of my constituents,” Nessel wrote.
She said she was assisted in getting up the stairs and then someone “grabbed a wheelchair so as to prevent me from stumbling in the parking lot.” Nessel said she was driven home.
“I am human. Sometimes I screw up,” she said. “This was definitely one of those times. My apologies to the entire state of Michigan for this mishap, but especially that Michigan fan sitting behind me. Some things you can’t un-see.”
Nessel has said she is running for reelection in 2022.
Michigan AG Dana Nessel posted a photo of herself at the tailgate to Facebook.Facebook
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s health minister, who has faced criticism for consuming and endorsing a herbal syrup made by a sorcerer, has tested positive for COVID-19.
A Health Ministry official on Saturday confirmed that Pavithra Wanniarachchi became the highest-ranking official to be infected with the virus. She and her immediate contacts have been asked to self-quarantine.
Doctors have said there is no scientific basis for the syrup as remedy for the coronavirus. It’s said to contain honey and nutmeg.
Thousands of people gathered in long queues in December in the town of Kegalle, northeast of the capital Colombo, to obtain the syrup, just days after Wanniarachchi and several other government officials publicly consumed it.
The maker of the syrup said he got the formula through his divine powers. In local media, he claimed the Hindu goddess Kaali appeared to him in a dream and gave the recipe to save humanity from the coronavirus.
Sri Lankans are used to taking both the regular medicine and indigenous alternative drugs to cure ailments.
Meanwhile on Saturday, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced that Sri Lanka will receive the first stock of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from India on Jan. 27.
He said India is giving this stock free of charge and his government is making arrangements to purchase more vaccines from India, China and Russia.
On Friday, Sri Lanka approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine amid warnings from doctors that front-line health workers should be quickly inoculated to prevent the medical system from collapsing. The vaccine was the first to be approved for emergency use in Sri Lanka.
The Health Ministry says the inoculation will begin by mid-February.
Sri Lanka has witnessed a fresh outbreak of the disease in October when two clusters — one centered on a garment factory and the other on the main fish market — emerged in Colombo and its suburbs.
Sri Lanka has reported 52,964 cases with 278 fatalities.
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This story has been corrected to show that the town where people lined up for the syrup was Kegalle.
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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
