The Blindboy Podcast - Immunology and Viruses

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

I chat with professor Luke O Neil who is an expert in immunology. We talk about the immune system, how it's affected by sleep and diet. And also how viruses spread around the world and why bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. Currently I am in Australia on a tour. So this week I have for you a particularly entertaining conversation I recently had with a class guest. And before I get into it, what have I got to say? Yeah, just a quick little plug for a few gigs. This gig that you're about to listen to, it was recorded in Dublin, in the Sugar Club. I'm going to be back in Dublin. I have three live podcasts in Vicar Street in April. I'm in Ulster Hall in Belfast.

I'm in the Cork Opera House. Those tickets are nearly gone. I think that's in March, near the end of March. My UK tour. There's still tickets left for Liverpool and Birmingham. I'm in the Glore Theatre in Ennis. And also, I don't know are these on sale yet, but if they're not, they will be soon.

And also, I don't know are these on sale yet, but if they're not, they will be soon. I have a gig coming up in Barcelona and Madrid, which is in Spain and Catalan. So, there you go, that's the crack, alright. I don't want to interrupt the live podcast, it's a particularly entertaining enjoyable one so just to let you know before I do it this podcast is free so please support this podcast via the Patreon page the Patreon is where my regular source of income

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podcast that i'm about to play for you i spoke to professor luke o'neill from trinity college who's an expert in immunology and the immune system and lu is someone I met him in like 2011 when I was doing a thing for science week and I've met Luke several times since at festivals and things backstage he's just a lovely a lovely man a really funny kind person and it radiates from him but also someone who's an expert in their field really and really passionate about communicating so so if you're interested in hearing about the immune system viruses how viruses spread i know it's particularly relevant at the moment with the coronavirus antibiotics arthritis, cancer STDs STDs

things like the ketogenic diet and how the ketogenic diet, how different diets influence the immune system how sleep influences the immune system we speak about all of this in the following conversation and I hope you enjoy it Yart

Do you know what I mean? I can't wait to bring out my guest so they're a professor of biochemistry and immunology in Trinity College but they're also an incredibly gas cunt Professor Luke O'neill

what is the crack sir i've never been called a gas cunt before blimey that's the first thing you know it's sobering you know but i'm very honored to be called gas cunt before Blimey, that's the first thing, you know it's a bit sobering, you know, but I'm very honoured to be called gas cunt by you of course, it's marvellous. It's the highest accolade you can get from a man from Limerick Absolutely. It's the what's the opposite of a gas cunt?

No, the anti-crack Oh yes, absolutely. The anti-crack or a bad buzz There used to be a lad in Limerick called Decky Bad Buzz. Imagine you want the shit you need to do to get called Decky Bad Buzz. Yeah, how did he get on? Do you know what? I think it was unfair.

It was an unfair... He used to get a bit serious at parties. But the name stuck with him because it's also a great name. It's kind of badass as well, though. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? DJ Decky Bad Buzz. So firstly, Luke, I want free medical advice from you.

Yes. You're a professor of immunology. I'm going to Thailand in three weeks, so I got a tetanus and hepatitis injection on my shoulder. Right. And two days later, I have a strange pain there on my underarm, which I think may be my lymph nodes. Am I correct?

I'll give you 12 hours. Rush, quick, go to the hospital immediately. No, not as bad. No, but you'll be all right. That means the vaccine's working. It's fantastic. The immune system is now being mobilized. Your lymph nodes are where it lives.

They're getting going in there now to protect you. So the lymph system, that's the part of the body that that responds to infection and invasive things yeah that's right that's like the main place where the immune system lives so if in in your skin say an infection the immune system carries that bug to your lymph node actually drags it in there and all the t-cells are in the lymph node and they beat the thing up so it's the place where all the action happens where are all the lymph nodes in the body here and you haven't even got to feel these swellings here in your neck, under your armpit, the inguinal

is down in there. Anywhere near an opening, I suppose, you're going to see lymph nodes. So near the mouth is a good place. Here in your neck, for instance. All over your body, your lymph nodes. What's the purpose of the body having multiple lymph nodes in different places? Why are they so strategic? Bollocks, armpits and throat.

Sounds like a porno film. It does. It is very strategic. In other words, get the immune system near where the action is. Have a depot with the soldiers in it, you see, ready to fight, I suppose. So they're spread all over the body for that reason. Would it be... So if I get, we'll say, a chest infection.

Yeah. Does that mean the armpits are working? Absolutely. There's even ones in your chest as well. There's special draining lymph nodes there as well. So there's loads of them all over your body, and they're there ready to do the hard work, I suppose, when the infection comes.

And is pus lymphatic fluid? I'm so glad you've asked about pus. Is it very close to your heart? Did you ever have a look at pus? Generally, I'm not too interested in my own pus. I'm trying to just get it down the toilet as soon as possible yeah but puss is like what like if i get a chest infection why does the doctor say to me when i go into the doctor and i say i might have a bit of a chest infection he says what color is your spit ah yes you see because then they can tell why does

he ask that well first of all the puss thing is interesting. Pus is the dead cells. So if you have, say, a spot in your skin or whatever, all that pus is dead white blood cells who've done their job and now died and they fill up that fluid, I suppose. And there can be some germs in there as well. You've got to be careful. But it's often sterile pus, by the way, because all the germs have been killed

and it's the troops that have died, I suppose, that are there for instance. The colour of your mucus can sometimes say it was a virus or a bacteria. So if it's very green, that means it's mainly bacterial. If it's clear, it could be a virus. There's some evidence for that.

So the colour of the secretions then might tell you what the pathogen might be that's infected you. And sometimes, if I go into my doctor and I just say, please give me an antibiotic, and he goes, all right, grand, but it's not going to do anything yeah like what's that about big mistake never give antibiotics for bacterial infections for instance never do that because some doctors are desperate to give their patients something sometimes because then you feel like i'm after giving you 60 quid and i

want to walk away with a box or something sir yeah value for money yeah yeah many not many have any gps or not many do it they'll remember yeah sometimes they give if you have a viral infection right uh penicillin won't work anabellics don't work for viruses but sometimes you're at risk of a bacterial infection on top so they sometimes give you an antibiotic to stop you getting a bacterial infection after a virus for instance that may be one reason test infections are more serious isn't it can be more serious exactly yeah so sometimes they're doing it prophylactically to protect you against the bacteria that might come because your virus you see makes you immunosuppressed kind of it beats up the immune system a bit and your immune system isn't working as a measles is a good example by the way one reason measles is so dangerous is it puts you

at risk of bacteria later so therefore you've got to watch that as well so sometimes they give antibiotics to prevent the bacterial stuff that comes later i suppose um so first time i met you it was about it was 2012 i was doing a thing for science week and i didn't really know what immunology was and one of the first things when i was chatting to you that i found utterly fucking fascinating because i assumed immune system so immune system is bacteria viruses and then you said to me you were looking at arthritis and cancer from the perspective of the immune system was i was going wow i didn't think cancer or arthritis had anything to do with the immune system yeah tell us about that yeah it turns out the immune system is a bit

like you know you're infected with bacteria and the troops come out and fight the thing and you get better right sometimes it's a civil war So your own troops turn on your own body, right? In arthritis, your joint is now suddenly full of the immune system for reasons as yet unknown, by the way. We don't know why it's called autoimmunity because it's auto-reaction. Suddenly your joint is filled up with the immune system

or your gut in the case of colitis. Your brain in MS, for instance, suddenly the immune system goes rogue and begins to attack your own tissues. And this means it's a very important thing to study because obviously if we can find out more about that, then we may come up with new treatments. So it goes rogue.

It goes basically out of kilter. So that begins to turn on your own body. So autoimmune is when your own immune system attacks itself. Yep. Yep. Is it fair to say that there's an increase in autoimmune? There is. That's the big one we have.

What the fuck is that about? Yeah, there's all kinds of... It could be cheese, you see. I don't know. Gorgonzola. I did hear, I heard... That's a joke, by the way. It's not cheese.

Any cheese makers here... Cheese doesn't cause arthritis. Someone make that clear. My friend's mother has MS and the entire family are lactose intolerant. Ah, yes. And they reckon there's a connection between the two. That's interesting.

That could be a connection. And the mother, when she doesn't drink dairy and has a ketogenic diet, her symptoms of MS are not as prevalent. She still has MS, but it's not flaring up. Very interesting. Yes, these are mysteries. I mean, we don't know why these things are going up the whole time. And there's no doubt they are. So things like colitis in the gut, incidents like this. Now, the question mysteries. I mean, we don't know why these things are going up the whole time. And there's no doubt they are.

So things like colitis in the gut, incidences like this. Now, the question is, why would that be? What are the prevailing theories? Two big theories. One is something in the environment, some toxin that wasn't there before, some plastic or some kind of byproduct of some process that we don't know what it is. The second one is the hygiene hypothesis. Are you familiar in Limerick with the hygiene hypothesis?

You've got to wash yourself. I carry with me, because I'm on tour all the time and meeting people, I always have my antibacterial gel. Big mistake. Ah, fuck off. Are you taking the piss? Flying by, you have the strongest immune system in Ireland, I predict, because of your lifestyle, you know.

Are you taking the piss? You've lived in Limerick for a start. That's going to be tough. And then all this, you know then all this dirt, basically. So dirt is good. I meet a lot of people all the time. I shake a lot of hands. I have a lot of contact with people.

And then as a result of that, my thing is door handles, so I'm straight for the alcohol robber when I see a door handle. Is that wrong? That works up to a point, but not if you're a young, healthy person. Your immune system is there to fight that stuff, remember. So your body should be able to fight it anyway. So what should I be doing?

Should I be just going, fuck the door handle? Exactly. Not literally. No, but unless you're that desperate. Jesus, my boy. Being on tour must be awful. No. Here's the best study of all, right, done on this.

So a very good friend of mine, an immunologist, we've got many friends. It's a great profession, by the way. You meet lots of people and you get on with them. And a guy in Ghent, a guy called Bart Lamprecht, best study ever, okay? If you're exposed to cow shit, and this is true now, right, especially cow dung, as a baby, right, in the first three, six months of life, if you expose a baby, they've done this experimentally, if you can believe it, much less asthma allergy when that baby grows if you expose a baby, they've done this experimentally, if you can believe it, much less asthma allergy when that baby grows up to be a child, okay?

So a bit of jerk when you're young is good for you. And the reason is it trains the immune system to behave itself. You know what I mean? In other words, the immune system gets exposed to this nasty germs, begins to figure out good from evil, as it were, you know, and for some reason,

then it doesn't react to your own. Asthma is like an allergic in your lungs, you you know and there's good evidence the hygiene thing is true so certainly especially for for babies actually a bit of dirt is a good thing now the type of dirt i'm not talking about dog shit yeah it's mainly being on a farm strain there was one study of what i'm at it there was one study done if a woman who is carrying a bit you know a baby and she's maybe in the second trimester, if she spends three months on a farm, just goes and lives on a farm for three months,

lesser incidence of allergy when her baby's born or the baby grows up. So even in the womb, the fetus is being exposed to these germs and now learning how to handle that sort of, you know, friend from foe idea. If it leaves the immune system uneducated, it gets confused and it suddenly begins to go a bit rogue.

Ironically, isn't the entire start of your field comes from someone who noticed that milkmaids who were around cows didn't get smallpox? Absolutely. Edward. That was Jenner. Yeah. He ripped off a farmer, though, called Jesty.

Get this. Go on. There was a local farmer near where Jenner lived, right? You know who Edward Jenner is? Edward Jenner discovered a vaccine for smallpox in 1790. Which we'll do later, by the way. We've got a sample of smallpox here. And I'm going to release it now into the room.

None of you are vaccinated, because smallpox was eliminated by a vaccine, remember? Yeah. Nowadays, no, exactly. So one in three get infected with it, okay, of this room, right? One in three of those will die of smallpox. Back then? Even now, if I was to infect them.

One in three be disfigured for life. They go blind, the pock marks. And one in three get over it. And that's a very interesting difference why that is. But it was known that milkmaids never got smallpox. Their skin was always very smooth, you see. And there was anecdotal evidence they were picking up cowpox when they're milking a cow.

And the cowpox looks a bit like smallpox, but doesn't cause any disease. And the immune system is being trained now to recognise cowpox and smallpox. So when they got smallpox later, their immune system was ready and could beat up the smallpox and they wouldn't get the disease. That's the base. Vaccination comes from vaccae.

Cow, you see, because the very first evidence was... There you have it disease. That's the base. Vaccination comes from vac-a, cow, you see, because the very first evidence was... There you have it now, a little factoid for you there. That's what a vaccination... Louis Pasteur said, let's call this vaccination in honour of Jenner. And is he pasteurisation? Exactly, same thing.

There you go. Now, Jenner becomes very famous, and he becomes a fellow of the Royal Society, like myself, you know. Very famous. He's given 20 grand guineas by the UK, the British government, to thank him. Napoleon called him the cleverest man in Europe, for instance, because suddenly smallpox is now, you know, conquered almost. A guy called Jesty goes, hang on a minute.

I'm the local farmer. I told Jenner what to do there, right? Wow. Where's my money? They bring Jesty to London. There's a painting of him. They gave him two golden lancets made of gold. That was his reward.

He says, where's the money? He says, you know, feck the lancets. He wanted cash, but he gave him lancets anyway. But Jesty deserves a bit of credit because he actually was the one to say, hang on a minute, you know, that was kind of my idea. But even so, Jenner did an experiment. This is the best part of this story.

Jenner infected a boy whose name was james phipps we even know his name right with cowpox and then tried to give him smallpox pretty dangerous you wouldn't get i think it approved yeah didn't get smallpox that was the evidence he was looking for then it's like an experiment you know what i mean so he was able to get what rationale is jenner i'm gonna get this child now and i may possibly infect him like did he get consent from the parents no it looks like he didn't there's a painting of famous painting of vips struggling and jen are doing that you know giving him the bloody thing so um it's a bit dodgy that so many of the the early scientists as well around the enlightenment they were doing a lot of dodgy shit they were there was one fella it was i can't

remember his name but he used to self-experiment to the point of uh he used to shove things into his eyes he put uh human shit into his own eyes to see what would happen. All of this stuff. And the worst part is after years and years of cutting himself and putting other people's vomit into his cuts, no benefit to any of his research. That's right. None.

It's the saddest thing. But by the way, he had a damn good time doing it, obviously. He must have enjoyed that kind of thing, whatever his thing. Isaac Newton stuck a needle in his own eye, for instance, to see how light would change. Can you imagine? There's bravery for science. We like these people. They're brave, you know. They're going out there and doing stuff. He was incredibly determined

though, Newton, wasn't he? He was. Extremely determined. He was, yeah. So the gist of it, from what I understand, like, okay, immunology is you give someone a little bit of the disease. Yeah, yeah. Like the other day, so I got tetanus, hepatitis A, and also typhoid.

Yeah. Did they give me a small bit of typhoid? They don't give the actual bug itself, because that would give you a typhoid, obviously. But I felt like shit for the rest of the day. Oh, you did? Absolutely. Yeah. Jenna had the genius to know cowpox looked a bit like smallpox, but wasn't causing disease, right?

Pasteur is the next guy. He does diphtheria. He boils up the bacteria that cause diphtheria, boils it up in a test tube and injects that. It's dead. It won't cause disease. But the immune system can now recognise that, you see. And they're called antigens.

That's the bit of the bug that the immune system recognises. And lo and behold, when the real bad guy comes along your troops are now trained and this thing called memory in the immune system remembers you know that's why when you're a child you get a cold you won't get another one maybe again you know because your immune system has evolved to remember and that's the base for vaccination so you always use what's called an attenuated strain one that's maybe boiled up or maybe you know know, modified by chemicals or something. And now you get a protection against that infection when you actually get it. To take it back to the thing with kids today, like little babies now, like the environment is incredibly sanitized, you know, sanitizing the bottle, keeping everything clean with bleach.

How does a parent with a newborn effectively go, I want my child to have germs, but not too many? Yeah, that's the tricky bit, isn't it? How do you do it? Let them play in the garden. That's for definite. And eat some soil. I'm not joking. Get a baby, bit of soil, bang.

You know, that's good for the immune system. Literally eat a bit of soil? Let them out and play in the garden. Or go to the park, you know, whatever it is. A bit of muck is a simple way to do this, by the way. Why muck specifically? It's got faeces, Strazy, to the park you know whatever it is a bit of muck is a simple way to do this by the way there was a study on children it's got it's got feces strays in it you know but not so much that they go blind that's right precisely it's all a dose thing you can't overdo it but you got to be careful of course and keep an eye on the baby and make sure nothing unto

what happens but a bit of normal living you know if you keep your house spotlessly clean that's a bad thing that's there's justification everybody don't clean your house very often you know and now it's the natural world you know i bring them to a farm for a while you know go a little you know whatever go for a walk in the country these things are seen to be beneficial i think that's the advice how do you feel about like so when i go to duns and i'm buying my cleaning products i'm always looking for the fucking 99.9 percent of bacteria going yeah fuck that man because you feel a bit like a general, you know what I mean? Just going, eradicating all the germs in your house. Is that silly?

Should I not be using all these sprays? Should I just be doing soap and water instead? Absolutely. Probably on the good and the toilet is a bit of bleach. The toilet will gather germs, let's face it. So toilets are probably okay. But there's no point spraying all your surfaces. That's just ridiculous.

Because, again, you're not having a natural environment then in a way so i'd advise against that to people not to be spraying their whole house with them bleach and those kind of things um so i had some class questions for you now oh actually we were talking earlier on about hiv yes this is what i want to know about so yep so like this is what i want to know about. So, like, this is what I want to figure out. So the one thing we know about HIV is it started sometime in the 50s in the Congo and Africa. But HIV used to be, so HIV is human immunovirus. Immunodeficiency virus.

Immunodeficiency virus. But it was SIV, which is simian monkeys. That's right So we know that HIV used to only affect monkeys And then something happened Where by it all of a sudden affected humans It meant And it happened in the Congo

So some people say someone Ate or fucked a monkey But we've been eating and fucking monkeys For a long time Not just in the 1950s. But then there's another bizarre conspiracy theory that a Swiss team of immunologists went to the Congo to give people a vaccine against smallpox.

They took a culture from a monkey, and that HIV was accidentally created by humans. That's not true. That's a conspiracy theory. I'm just putting it out there. How the fuck does SIV turn into HIV? Well, if you're an immunologist, you love HIV. That sounds a bit strange, I know.

But I remember I was training at the time when that virus emerges. It was a fascination. You were an immunologist when AIDS was this thing and no one knew what it was. This massive mystery. And a good friend of mine in Massachusetts, who was an infectious disease guy, said to me one day, very strange patients turning up in my hospital.

I don't know what's causing this. And this is 1981, 82? Yeah, early 80s. They have strange little bumps on their hands. They're getting a strange, rare type of pneumonia, which they'd rarely see in people. What's causing this? And there were like tens and twenties, hundreds of them, often gay men were the first to present. And it was a big mystery what the hell is called

and then they were dying even worse of course they couldn't treat them they got worse and worse and worse and they died and finally the virus they called it gay cancer absolutely

it was called the gay plague it was called outrageously even at that time they knew haemophiliacs were getting it by the way and that was a clue kind of

and that was ignored and that's got to be a gay thing it was a way to you know anti-gay sentiment um and then eventually luke montanier again paris in the pasteur and finds the virus you know and it there it is he wins the nobel prize for discovering this very interesting virus that was 84 i think is when he actually reported on it you know and then there was controversy an american guy called gallo said oh i found it first and it turned out he'd been using a sample of Luc Montagnier's lab stuff. So it was all very controversial at the time, you know, who actually discovered it.

But now there's a virus that caused it. The question then is, what's the virus doing? Next big breakthrough, it infects the immune system. So it specifically goes into your T lymphocytes and kills them. And the T lymphocyte is like your general of the immune system. So it goes straight to the action, if you like. But the big mystery, as you say, Brian, was how did this happen? And there were a few theories.

One was the conspiracy one. That's not true for definite, right? It looks like in the 1940s, sort of colonialists, as we called them earlier, were moving into parts of Africa that hadn't been in before and there were monkeys there with SIV. And a monkey probably bit someone is the idea. And then some of the virus goes into the human. Now, it doesn't cause any much disease in monkeys.

It's a bit like having a mild cold, and the monkeys recover. You know, this thing, it mutates into HIV. And now that's lethal in humans. We're not the natural host, if you like. See, a virus wants to keep you alive, remember. So they can spread. You know, that's its mission, in a way. Wow.

It kills the host. It's a negative. So it becomes very virulent. And suddenly, then, HIV becomes a feature and begins can spread. That's its mission in a way. It kills the host, it's a negative. So it becomes very virulent, and suddenly then HIV becomes a feature and begins to spread. And it's in your T lymphocytes. They live in your blood. That's where the immune system lives.

That's why it's spread by blood. It's as simple as that. It could be haemophiliacs. It could be through sex, gay or straight sex. Blood exchange happens. And now, hey, presto, the virus begins to spread in the population. I have a mad theory right um i i when i think of climate change right i sometimes think what if humans are a virus right and the art is like our host and basically we're destroying the planet like a virus and then one day someone's going to figure out how to make a rocket.

And that's like the, I was sneezing. And then we end up infecting Mars. Yeah. And are just, but can you give me that again? I just know, but it's like,

imagine humans are like a cold. Oh yeah. Like we're like viruses and we're infecting the earth. We're on the earth now. And we're really destroying the planet. We're killing the planet. Yeah. And we're either faced with fixes

or very, very rich people can get the technology to live on Mars. Yeah. Essentially, once that rocket leaves, it's like the earth sneezes the virus out onto another person and then we infect Mars. Yeah.

I'll get back to you on that one. I think there could be evidence for that, but we haven't seen it certainly it's a good question is the planet killing going to kill us effectively earth wants to get rid of us maybe yeah because we're making a mess of it for everybody else well art's going to be grand when we're gone well that's right i mean when people say we're destroying the planet it's like the planet's gonna win yeah yeah and then there'll be new creatures i don't know dinosaurs would come back again you never know People say we're destroying the planet. It's like the planet's going to win. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then there'll be new creatures. I don't know, dinosaurs with pants.

We'll come back again. You never know. They may re-evolve. We wouldn't be here if the dinosaurs weren't extinct, remember. That's true, yeah. That allowed a gap for us to evolve. Our ancestor then was a tiny, furry creature, like a mouse, by the way, that we're descended from.

Yeah. And the dinosaurs had to get wiped out by that meteorite, and then we could evolve. A chance event, by the way. That wasn't designed, I hasten to add. A meteorite hits randomly and then we can evolve. That's why we're here, basically. Without the dinosaurs becoming extinct, we wouldn't be here.

I heard that as a result of climate change, there's viruses that are held in Arctic ice and that because the Arcticctic ice is melting that viruses are being released is that true and is it something to no there's no evidence for that yet but there is evidence for climate change increasing certain pathogens on earth lime disease is a good example right so that that particular bug likes warmer weather as it were you know is lime disease the one that happens when you when you get bitten by a deer tick it's absolutely a bacterial thing isn't it and ticks bite you the bacteria called borrelia goes into your system causes a big irritation that's going up in incidence because

because of global warming so we may see more pathogens getting more successful because of global warming is one fear that climate change will that will result in and what do you think of like like a water is a big carrier of disease isn't this yep and one of the big fears with climate change is that we will run out of fresh water and that there'd be less hygiene in water yep floods are terrible for diseases yep i mean what that's another fear yeah absolutely flooding will always increase infection anywhere for instance because these germs like to live in water, and the creatures they live in are often water-dwelling creatures.

So again, you can see infections spreading because of flooding. That's the other worry that people have. What does something like a hurricane or a typhoon do to a country when it comes to the... Yeah, that's a great question. There's always an increase in the rate of infection in those countries, partly because of stress, remember, because it's a very stressful thing, and your immune system doesn't do well if you're stressed for instance that's one reason but secondly some

of these pathogens love those traumatic conditions in a way you know and then they can spread more readily they want to spread their mission is to infect us remember it's always a war the immune system evolved to fight these buggers as we call them technically because without the immune system we'd all be dead you know and it's always a battle between the two the whole time you know and therefore we see the immune system doing its job, I suppose. But then sometimes these germs get the upper hand and we see these diseases emerge. So that's the big fear.

Yeah, one of the questions I had was to ask you about the impact of trauma or mental health or stress on our immune systems. Does it happen and how does that work? There's two very hot areas in immunology at the moment if you go to the big i go to these conferences all the time right and and what are people talking about the bar and you know we're all excited one is the brain immune axis that that connection is a fascination and getting more and more scientific it was a bit flaky for a while you know you get a bit stressed you catch a cold can that be true and stuff yeah more and more evidence intimate connection between the two there's no doubt about it at all you know

did you know many of the nerves in your body aren't in your brain they're in your gut and the gut connects to different organs through the nervous system you see so there's a real connection from the gut now to your liver and your kidneys and so on that's one example you know so that interaction between the brain and the immune system and no doubt by the way now chronic stress is a huge negative increased risk of infection for definitely the immune system doesn't like chronic stress think our cortisol is in your body and that suppresses the immune what is cortisol i've heard cortisol that's a hormone yes that's the hormone that gets released when you're under stress absolutely especially chronic stress like low level low grade stress you see more cortisol that's an immunosuppressant so the

immune system can't work as well that's the big one you know secondly cancer the immune system fights tumors as in fact as we sit here a good example i give is as we're all sitting here over the course of an hour one tumor cell will arise in your body oh don't tell me that yep and luckily blind boy you're so healthy your immune system zaps it. Bang, kills the tumour cell. Fantastic. One job of the immune system is to kill cancer. So is alien. Now, the trouble is, if you're immunosuppressed,

you get cancer. That's why HIV patients got Kaposi's sarcoma, because that's a type of skin cancer, because their immune system was being turned off. So we need the immune system to fight infection, but we also need it to fight cancer. Any kind of low-level stress increases risk of those. to fight infection, but we also need to fight cancer.

Any kind of low-level stress increases risk of those. What's the point of my body generating a cancer cell while I'm doing a podcast? Yeah, that's a great question. Like, seriously, because it's just... Are you insured now? Podcasting causes cancer. No, but it's just like, it doesn't make sense. It's like, why would my body bother its arse going, here's a bit of cancer there for the crack.

See how we get on. Why? But cancer's not a virus. Cancer doesn't... If it's a virus, it's like, I want to fuck you over, blind boy. I want to get in there and give you a cold. Well, let's remember, cervical cancer is caused by a virus. And that's why that vaccine is so... HPV, really important vaccine to give to young people.

Because there is a cancer caused by a virus. So very rarely in humans. But there's not loads of cancer. Very rare in humans, actually, yeah. Cancer is a mutation in a gene in your cells. Some kind of gene gets mutated, and that gene then, the product of that gene, is overactive and causes the cancer to grow.

That's what cancer is. Is cancer like if, I don't know, there was an architect in town building a building and I broke into the office and decided to fuck up his plans and then the builders build it wrong. Yeah. Is that what cancer is like? It fucks up your DNA.

Absolutely. That's exactly what it does. And things like smoking is bad. There's chemicals in smoke that mutate the DNA and cause cancer. They're called carcinogens. What is a carcinogen and what does it do? So a carcinogen is a chemical that reacts with your DNA directly and modifies the DNA.

The gene is now changed and you get a mutant form of that protein. And that often is involved in cells growing. And they grow out of control and form a tumor. Many of them are tumor suppressor genes. Our bodies are full of ways to suppress tumors. If they get mutated, that doesn't work either. And now the tumor grows. So it's a genetic difference in your DNA, you see.

And then the immune system luckily in all of us most of the time fights that tumor and sees it as foreign and kills it you know and of course the risk then would be immunosuppression would increase risk of cancer what happens to okay why do people get more cancers as they get older the mutation rate goes up first of all the longer you're on earth right you age which is a very interesting process as well, by the way. And the mutations begin to build up as you age. That's one thing. Secondly, everything begins to go off kilter as we get old,

as we know. With ways of repairing DNA damage, the special enzymes that can fix a mutation, they begin to work less well as you get old. So therefore you see an increased mutation rate as we age, for those are the main reasons. And that's, again, the basis for this is genetic genetic differences uh form the basis that's why age is a risk factor for cancer in most people may well develop a tumor at some point in their

life now the good you want to hear the good news now yeah the best news ever for cancer i'm not joking you're by a country mile right is a new treatment for cancer that wakes up the immune system okay there's a treatment now, you can get it in Ireland, it's called ipilimumab, it's one of these drugs, that wakes up the immune system to kill the tumour. And this is the biggest breakthrough in cancer therapy for 50 years. When did this start? When did this become available?

There's a great story here as well, by the way. Please, we're on the podcast. I work on inflammatory diseases, this is my area, like arthritis and so on. I know all the cancer guys. Never liked them for some reason. They were always so up their own asses.

We work on cancer. It's very, yeah. And I'm going, well, what are you talking about? Yeah, we're going to save him dying. You're just going to just fold a knee. Forget that.

That's boring. So it was awful. You know, and we liked them as well. They were always radical, by the way. The best, the most weirdest people

in immunology were immuno-oncologists. And they'd be in little, little groups and meetings. Nobody talks to them. One of them, a guy called Jim Allison, who I knew for years, played harmonica with the Grateful Dead. There's a little fact for you. Wow. Yeah. That impressed me more than the fact that he won the Nobel Prize last year. Forget that, Jim. It's the harmonica I'm after. Anyway, he wouldn't go to Harvard. He hated all the Harvard types, the Yale's. They're all assholes. He worked in Texas mainly because he couldn't stand all those East Coast pompous people.

Got a job at MD Anderson. Kept banging on this drum. If we get the immune system active, we'll fight cancer, right? And what he said was the immune system has brakes as well as accelerators, right? Like most machines, when you get infected, the accelerator works, the brake eventually comes on. He said, tumors are very cunning. They apply the brake on the immune system.

If we block that brake, it's called a checkpoint, by the way, is the other name, like a barrier comes down, block the brake, and now the accelerator will work and will kill the tumor. He shows us the mice, first of all, nobody believed him. I'm not joking, at conferences, they laugh at him. This can't work, you know. Finally know finally proven to be correct he discovers the drug ipilimumab it is a trial in melanoma patients it's a 70 response it's a lethal type of cancer it's now in lung ovarian another guy in japan called honjo who's his mate gets another drug similar to his one absolutely amazing data coming out now there's a 50 response right now in lung

cancer with checkpoint inhibitors so in other words we're now seeing for the first time and drug similar to his one. Amazing data coming out now. There's a 50% response right now in lung cancer with checkpoint inhibitors. So in other words, we're now seeing for the first time. And we're not going to spoof in this business. And are we talking the last five years? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think IPI was approved about four or five years ago. Fuck.

But what's amazing is this medical research game, and I'm drawn into commenting occasionally about it. They come in on a spoof. Oh, yeah, we've got a cure for this, a cure for that. This is true. This is really working. And the prediction is it'll get better. Now,'t respond that's what have we seen statistically what what difference have we seen statistically the projection is going to be huge but they're predicting already there are people now at melanoma who should have been dead

two years ago still alive for instance you know and so we're going to see more and more use of these drugs i suppose and in ireland they're expensive is the problem, remember. That's the next question we might have. Yeah, here's the thing. They're not cheap. But the truth is that daily... What if you're poor? What if you're poor in Ireland? That's the big...

I think the HSE is taking it beyond. I think they're... Because, yeah, isn't it how it works? It's someone, like... If you have HIV today, there's a drug you can take. Not... Is it PrEP? Yeah, the prophylactic one. But the one that you can take if you have it. Oh, yeah, that's right drug you can take, not, is it PrEP? Yeah, the prophylactic one.

But the one that you can take if you have it. Oh yeah, that's right, the reverse transcriptase. There's a drug that you can take if you have HIV today, which means you cannot infect another person. And people are living today with HIV, and it's almost like having asthma. Yeah, that's right. Because I had Will St. Laser and Tony Walsh

from ACT UP, the HIV organisation in Ireland, talking about it. And they were trying to get access to it. And finally this year it was brought in. Yeah, absolutely. People with HIV, the government will pay for this drug. That means they can't infect. Now, what they can't pay for is there's a drug called PrEP. And PrEP is if you don't have HIV but your partner does,

if you take PrEP, you can't get it. It's incredible. What's happened with HIV recently and the drugs is amazing. People can have HIV and they can live really healthy, normal lives as if you had asthma or maybe diabetes. Yeah, that's right. But is the cost, yeah, and who's going to pay? This is going to happen all the time now, by the way.

New drugs are going to be out every week almost. You'll see another new drug being launched, kind of. Who will pay for them? Will the HSE pay for this drug? How much is it to actually buy if you get cancer to get it privately? I don't know, but it's not cheap. Tens of thousands these drugs often cost. And the checkpoint ones, they're costing 80, 90 grand, say, a year.

Now, this is stopping you from dying from cancer. But is the price justified, or is it just some Yank pharmaceutical company taking the case? Well, that's the big question again. So the Yank drug company, who I work for, by the way, they would say, we're giving this stuff away for free. Not. No. It costs $1.2 billion to make a new drug. That's the cost, right?

Many fail, remember. So it's a very high-cost business to be in, first of all. And drug companies make money. They're a business like anywhere else. But they're very aware of this problem. And you'll see them discuss it in various ways. They want patients to get... The whole reason I'm doing this is for patients to get access to the drugs.

We're crying out loud. But the question is, how are we going to pay for it? Health governments will have to pay for this, by the way. But the HSE took on the cystic fibrosis. That was a big success last year. That's a very expensive drug, but it really works in cystic fibrosis. And now the HSE have taken it on. So we'll see more of it.

It's a big issue for governments, though. A big part of their budget will go towards new medicines, it must be said. They'll do deals with drug companies, I guess, to get that cystic fibrosis price down a bit. So it's a dialogue that's happening, you see. But you can't have a situation where there's a drug that stops cancer and people can't get access to it. That's outrageous.

It happens anyway in the developing world. They can't get access to normal drugs, you know. But that's a big issue that we need to confront the whole time and it will become more and more of an issue, I think, as these new medicines become available. And do you think, is it becoming more and more of an issue because science is advancing to the point that just better discoveries are happening more often?

Yeah, absolutely. That's the best thing about immunology. When I began immunology all those years ago, we knew maybe this much, right? That's the scale. We now know a kilometre high. The knowledge base is massive because of tens of thousands of people

in Trinity and UCD and UCC. We're all part of the adventure, you know. This knowledge acquisition is amazing. What has been that catalyst? Do you think has the internet played a part? Has computers? Huge. Absolutely.

Information transmission speeded up. And the technology got better through the experiments in the labs. The equipment we have is much more elaborate as well. So all that technology has helped to advance this really fast. So one thing I want to know about and this is where we get on to kind of ethics um i don't know if you remember i did a podcast about six months ago and what i was investigating was um do you know like uh dna companies like 23andme and history.com where like you spit into an envelope and you send it off and it'll tell you what your genes are.

Well, I was looking into it and... Like a DNA test should cost €1,000, right? For any one of us to get your DNA tested, to find out what it is, should cost €1,000. But yes, 23andMe and History.com are able to charge €100. So you're left going, where's the 900 quid, lads? Are you giving me shit for free? They're not. where's the 900 quid lads? Are you giving me shit for free? They're not. What's happening is when you get a 23andMe test

they have, they own your genetic data. You're signing off the data of your genes you're giving to the company and they have it. Glacko, Smitko, Klein who make Lemsip bought for 300 million all the genetic data of anyone who's used

23andme to develop pharmaceuticals this is a thing that's happening people aren't really aware of it and what i'd like to ask you luke is it sounds unreal because you're going wow i have the dna of hundreds of thousands of people yeah but then there's the ethics of what fucking happens with that data then. There's two aspects to this, and a conflict of interest. I've done stuff with GSK, so I've worked for them. They gave 300 million to 23 million. They've got 10 million different people's DNA they have access to. And I was there recently, and they said to me,

there's a terrible disease called lupus that afflicts people. It's an awful immune disease. I think something like 200,000 of those 10 million have lupus because they fit on a medical record and now they can see what genes are different in those all those people and now find a treatment for that disease so it's extremely powerful in fact the future is this i think in some ways for medicine that massive number of people all the diseases mapped and now we know what's going wrong and then can design drugs to to against those things right and that's all good and is that you do take a box is that really no it's been going on for about 10 years now or more maybe but you take a box if when you

give your spit you see you take a box that says you can use my dna for medical research yeah and your your hope is of course that a patient might benefit maybe someone in your family might have lupus or whatever it is that's. That's the deal you're doing with them in a way. If the price of the drug is low enough when it's on the market, that's the bit that's still not clear, let's say. So is your fear, Luke, that yes, it's amazing now that research has access to this DNA and great things can happen. But with the results that come from it, it can be exclusionary based on the price absolutely that's the biggest fear but the other fear i have as well luke is whatever about using the genetic data to give to pharmaceutical companies to improve medicine there's also uh

governments oppressive not even oppressive governments. Every government, they want to know what our DNA is for tracking us. You want to say improving policing to solve murders, to have everyone's DNA. But you look at what's happening in China at the moment. You know what I mean? They want every facet of our data. They want our behavior through how we use our phones. And now they want our actual fucking skin and our DNA. And also as well, what troubles me is

if they have everyone's DNA, the ability to make designer babies and shit like that, the ability to get into someone's genes, eradicate the possibility for a disease, but then only very wealthy people have access to that. So rich and poor now is no longer about class. It's about the rich people don't get this

disease and the poor people do. That's always the fear, by the way, that the elite get access to the technology, remember, and that begins. Do you think that's going to happen? Are the UN or whoever looking at that? They are. The World Health Organization are the key governing body they're looking this closely now i'm wondering what's going to happen and can we regulate it and can we make sure these very

things you're raising don't happen and dna is a private thing you don't want anybody getting access to your dna you see so the 23 and me guarantee that of course i say look it's only for this purpose only which is the hope that that must be true, we guess. But the privacy issue is a big one with DNA, absolutely. Do you know, is our DNA data protected under GDPR? I think it is, yeah, absolutely. Unless you sign it away, of course. You can sign it away, yeah, of course. And these forms are very long.

What worries me is sometimes these forms are too bloody complicated. You can't be fucking arsed. To tick boxes anyway, that's one worry. I had my dna done with 23 and me and um this is about seven eight years ago and you at that time they would let you know which famous people you're related to if there's famous people in the database okay and gave consent for this and i'm waiting for this to come in who am i related to and it was susan sarandon have you heard of her?

I emailed her. I said, Susan, will you invite me to the next movie premiere? I'm your cousin from Ireland. She didn't get back to me, sadly. And I'm also an O'Neill, I think, because, you know, Niall of the Nine Sausages, as they called him. Actually, that's what I want to talk about. Most people in this room come from Niall of the Nine Hostages, don't we?

Because... Hegemony. Hegemony. My colleague Dan Bradley showed this. So many men are carrying the O'Neill marker from the 4th century, and that must be this guy Niall, they reckon, right? And I asked Dan, why is that? Like, why are so many men? It could be 1 in 18 Irish men are descended from this guy, you know.

Some number, the actual number is still not it is, but something like that. And he said, oh, yes, he says there was hegemony going on back then and i said i said warlords would have as many babies as they could with all the women in the community or whatever and kill the babies of the rivals at the same time to make sure their dna passed on isn't that ultimate darwinism in action there and that could be why the o'neill gene is so dominant you know nile was just doing it because he's like, if everyone's related to me, I won't be usurped. Yeah, yeah. But that's what lions do.

What was he thinking of? He didn't have a DNA back then, did he? But he wanted all the people to be descended from him. Genghis Khan is the famous, you know Genghis Khan? Tens of millions of people from Genghis Khan as well, you see. And again, the same thing must have been going on with Genghis Khan. They were obviously full-blown psychopaths. They must been yes but therefore do you think that uh that

means that there's a genetic advantage for psychopathy because one in every 100 people is a psychopath not every one in 100 people is a murderous psychopath most of them end up in business yes yeah but with that not i'm not talking out of my hole, lads. That's true. If you look statistically, one in every 100 people is an actual fucking psychopath. But only one in every fucking 10,000 or something becomes a murderer, depending on the environment they grew up in. The rest of the psychopaths, they end up in fucking business. And last night I had guests on, and one of them was, he used to be a banker during the Celtic Tiger.

And he had to do aptitude tests throughout his job where they basically try and find out are you compassionate or are you a prick? And the pricks rise to the top. Seriously. Psychopathy and business, look it up. It's a real thing. They go hand in hand. Yeah, so I often

wonder because you kind of go, what's the point in psychopaths but there is obviously a genetic advantage yeah there must be some advantage precise I know what to do I'm going to kill everyone's children

and fuck their wives do you know what I mean yes exactly I'm going to open up the bar now so you can get a little pint and we'll be back out in about 15 minutes alright alright fair play to you we were chatting

backstage about artificial meat yes you're going to be talking on the TV tomorrow about artificial meat yep

can you tell us so like the impossible burger yeah what the fuck is that which you can have in Burger King now tomorrow about artificial meat. Yep. Can you tell us, so like, the Impossible Burger. Yeah. What the fuck is that? Which you can have in Burger King now. Anybody have one,

an Impossible Burger? Did you like it? It tastes the same. It is quite nice. I was having them over in Canada. It could be the future, however.

So the secret there, if you're a biochemist like me, the secret was hemoglobin is a key part of meat, right? Is hemoglobin, when you buy a biochemist like me the secret was haemoglobin is a key part of meat right is haemoglobin when you buy a steak and there's this weird red watery that's it yeah haemoglobin so this biochemist in california extracts haemoglobin from plants clover initially have the thing called haem in it most plants have this stuff anyway and it could you could make a haemoglobin substitute if you will and that gave it the extra edge.

Suddenly, then, the impossible burger became a reality. Because having that as an ingredient really helps the flavor, the bloody effect with the beetroot juice as well. And then they begin making these burgers. And, of course, it's much cheaper than the synthetic ones, which they actually grow in a lab. We're still a bit of a distance away from growing burgers in a lab. You know, that's very expensive still.

But this business of using a meat substitute of sorts has now taken off. What is... Thank you very much. The reason plant-based burgers are good is because it's like we know that beef has got a terrible

environmental impact. First off, there's the cow's farts. But then, more important than the cow's farts what can be more important than a cow's fart it's the thing is um me shouldn't if you look at the amount of uh land required to feed one cow and the amount of water required to feed one cow and then the fact that 500 grams of cow costs a fiver, it shouldn't

500 grams of cow should cost about 30-40 quid so therefore beef is literally unsustainable but we've managed to create this massive production whereby it somehow is sustainable, it's not, the environment is what's

suffering, so then you think, okay, the Impossible Burger, is it mostly soya? Yeah, there's various things in it that are vegetable-based, you see. You have texture and things like that. But can they say, if we all of a sudden tomorrow

decide to start eating soya, then you have to chop down a lot of trees to grow soya beans, which then has an environmental impact so the challenge but you're right but the methane is the big problem that's a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is nine times worse than co2 you see so every time you a cow belches or farts methane is in the atmosphere and that's a big source of methane so one reason to get get less cows is to decrease the methane content in the atmosphere is one reason but you're're right, though, it's very expensive to make a pound of meat full of protein.

We've been discussing now for the last 43 days, it feels like, outside. But insects, you see. Insects, that's what I'm interested in. And they're extracting protein now from insects, a very rich source of protein. So again, you can now stop using, I guess, cattle as a source of protein and have different sources, including plant-based and then insect-based. The future may well be more insect-based meat if you like than cattle like right now ireland this year has brought in um the law will say that makes it okay to grow insects for food for animals we don't have the law yet for food for humans yet i don't know

there's a company up in monaghan called Hexafly, and they're basically growing little maggots. And what they want to do is... So if I say one of the issues with feeding a cow is you need an acre of wheat, instead of getting an acre of wheat, you can give the cow some little maggots that you grind up into a rich protein source. That maggot requires fuck-all water. The maggot is fed on up into a rich protein source, that maggot requires fuck all water.

The maggot is fed on waste that comes from kitchens, so it's waste that already exists. So now all of a sudden, beef in Ireland, assuming it's been fed a protein-rich meal that's made from insects, is like 40% more environmentally friendly. So, but, where we need to be going with it is us as human beings eating insects and i know it sounds rotten but like here's part of the problem first off if you want you can go onto amazon right now and you can buy a kilogram of cricket flour like uh bodybuilders at the

moment uh cricket protein is the newest thing and it's just it's protein that's made from ground up crickets but you can make I don't know, get a few soya beans and some kidney beans and mix a lot of cricket protein into it and you have your own half veggie half insect burger that has more protein than a beef burger and is environmentally friendly but

like most of the world eats insects you go to fucking Asia they eat crickets, they eat grubs, not a bother it's just a matter of, like lads at Black Puddin'. Black Puddin's a lot of blood in a pig's arsehole. And it tastes great, right?

And I love them! I'd kill a man for a Black Puddin'. You're not sponsored by Clonic Hilty Black Puddin', obviously. But like, it's just about us changing our... I'll happily eat crickets, but the other thing like uh it's just about us changing around i'll happily eat uh crickets but the other thing too is it's how they present them and a lot of them they stir fry an entire insect yeah but the other thing i'd say to people is look at the state of lobsters and prawns

they're just insects from the sea they're horrible looking bastards but we'll munch into the rectum of a lobster not a batter batter but the impact on the environment if we all switched to insects it'd be fucking phenomenal and like I said, what the important thing is you require very little resources to be growing all these insects do you know anything about

biofuels? not as much as you, now you interviewed an expert didn't you, you were telling me earlier about biofuels do you know what biofuels is that something not as much as you know you would you interviewed an expert didn't you about you're telling me earlier about biofuels yeah so did you know what biofuels are so biofuels are them it's it's basically where you get pre-existing waste right so we said the brewery industry in Ireland has a lot of waste in with with barley we'll say the cheese industry has loads of waste and the fucking dairy industry and the beef industry has loads of waste the fucking dairy industry and the beef industry has a load of waste shit that's decomposing

right, either it be dead cows unused cheese fucking plants anything that decomposes that creates a problematic amount of carbon that goes into the air and methane which heats the planet so biofuels is you grab this shit that's happening anyway,

and instead of allowing it into the atmosphere, you digest it in this big fucking tank, and you turn that into a fuel that you can put into your car tomorrow without even changing your engine. There's a town in Sweden, and their entire public bus network runs from biofuel made from the local cheese industry. And that's happening now. So that's one of the things for the future.

It's like if we're to look at what would a ecologically sound society look like? Firstly, it's going to be multiple types of power. You're not going to just have electric. You're going to have electric, you're going to have biofuels. There's the smart grid business where you're able to share electricity like with the internet. So you'd have solar, wind, a bit of

wave energy, biofuel. And then a crucial thing is because this is the shitty thing about you want to be vegan to save the fucking world but like if you're eating fucking avocados your avocados come first off 70% of the world's avocados are controlled by the Mexican

mafia that's a fact the Mexican mafia are moving away from drugs into avocados I swear to fuck I swear to fuck very violent people are being murdered over our desire for avocados our desire for quinoa is causing an irish potato famine style event in peru and bolivia because the indigenous people of peru and bolivia have had quinoa for a thousand fucking years

all of a sudden people in stony batter get the horn for it and now the people in peru can't afford their own quinoa because they're exporting it all. So there's an environmental impact even when we try and be ethical. So the solution to that then is you localise everything. Instead of the huge EU... Like the farmers are protesting at the moment.

Farmers are protesting because they can't make money from their beef because the European market is so huge that it's not cost effective. But the way you change that is you have it like you had in the fucking 40s and 50s, like how our grandparents grew up. You buy the cow that lived down the road from you. You eat the cheese that was made down the road from you.

And you've got less distance traveled. You've got less fuel used. It's healthy for the biodiversity of the area. So you're kind of just, it's asking people to return to what we've already seen before 60 years ago. Can you eat the cow if you know its name? That's a problem.

Here comes Blossom, kill it and eat it. I know. It's a bit sort of traumatic. Cows are actually fucking lovely and sound when you get to know them, you know? They're very intelligent creatures, cows. I've started following a lot of pigs on Instagram, too. And they've got a lot of empathy, lads,

and it makes me think twice when I'm drinking their blood and eating their anus, you know, with a hangover. Do you know another fact about cows? I'm glad we didn't expect to talk about cows, but cows line up with the magnetic field of the earth. They can sense the magnetic field. Strangely. Some animals up with the magnetic field of the earth. They can sense the magnetic field. Strangely. Some animals can sense the magnetic field of the earth.

You know, homing pigeons are very good at sensing the magnetic field. They fly home using magnetism in their brains. I can understand why. Cows can line up with the magnetic field for some unknown reason. They're herding animals who probably have to travel a large amount of distance. So that makes sense. Yep. I got asked a bit.

On April 3rd, you must be very careful margaret it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all thank you no don't the first o-men i believe girl is to be the mother mother of of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real.

It's not real. Who said that? The first Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game,

and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Bizarre question here, and it's so bizarre, I don't know, is it relevant or is it true? Can he explain the role of turkey tail mushrooms and the immune system, especially its role in inhabiting some cancers?

Turkey tail mushrooms? I've never heard of turkey tail mushrooms. Okay, then that's a silly question. It may be a species of mushroom, I guess. What about when you're out having a few pints, and then your friend says to you, would you like a pint?

And then you say, no, I'm on antibiotics. And then they say, sure, that's grand. Should we have pints on antibiotics? We all need to know this. We do indeed. And the answer is, I don't know. No, need to know this. We do indeed. And the answer is, I don't know.

No, I do. Okay. The answer is, the reason for this is pressure on your liver. So if you take certain drugs, your liver is the main place we detoxify drugs. You know, alcohol puts pressure on the liver.

A double whammy could damage your liver. So the advice is, if you're on heavy meds of any kind really, avoid the gargle because it puts pressure on the liver. A double whammy could damage your liver. So the advice is, if you're on heavy meds of any kind, really, avoid the gargle because it puts pressure on the liver. Because I also heard that's why some people would take two paracetamol before bed to cure the hangover, and it's like, no. Paracetamol's dangerous to the liver, and you're processing alcohol too. That can be a problem.

But a good thing to take after a few drinks is eggs. Eggs? Eggs. Eggs are full of an amino acid called cysteine any biochemist here and that can make i think a glutathione in your liver and that detoxifies alcohol so there's some evidence eggs help you speed up detoxification so the full irish space the next morning basically with the black pudding you know but have the full irish as well if possible eat the eggs before you go to bed. That will help. But in the next morning, have a full Irish.

It will help with the hangover because it helps metabolize the alcohol is the key thing there. Is an autoimmune disease the manifestation of a broken immune system or an overprotective one? That's a good question to ask. It's overactive for sure. So the immune system goes into overdrive and begins to make all the weapons of mass destruction

that it would normally make for an infection. And they cause the inflammation and the pain that you normally see. So it's overactive immune system. But there's some defect there that we don't know. Something's broken, obviously, in the immune system to put it into overdrive. Could be genetic.

So for example, rheumatoid arthritis is probably 40% genetic and 60% environmental. That means you're carrying certain gene variants that predispose you for that particular disease in the immune system, you see. So there's something going on there that's a bit broken as well. But it's mainly an overactive response.

Another thing, actually, I wouldn't mind asking you about is, and this is the only time I'm going to quote Jordan Peterson, but Jordan Peterson, we're not going to talk about his politics. One of the strange things about Jordan Peterson is he had some type of chronic pain autoimmune disease. He didn't know what the fuck it was. And it was causing him intense pain. He was incredibly sick all the time. And then Jordan Peterson switched to a diet of just meat and salt and it was causing him intense pain he couldn't he was incredibly sick all the time and then

jordan peterson switched to a diet of just meat and salt only meat and salt right and he says he's symptom free for two years similarly like i said my friend's mother who has multiple sclerosis ms was not doing too well switched to aogenic diet, which is basically no carbohydrates or grains, loads of meat and loads of fat, and she now still has MS but is mobile and not flaring up. Yeah. Is there science behind that? It's tricky that.

The dietary bit's been very hard to prove scientifically, really. Will a diet affect MS, for instance? And it's been very hard to show for definite. The issue there is MS goes into remission naturally, and then you have exacerbations. You see it's a bit random. So she might be lucky. So it could be luck.

She's suddenly gone into remission now. But there is some evidence that diet helps, by the way. And the ketogenic diet's a big one. They talk a lot about it in cancer, for instance. But again, limited evidence. Absolutely. There's some definite evidence of certain chemicals, like tartrazine is a good example,

can bring on an epileptic attack. So there can be bad things in your diet as well to cause those but changing your diet to affect disease is a tricky thing there's not much evidence there's some evidence but but still the jury's out in some of that um but what would you say regarding our diets and the health of our immune system yeah well first of all obesity is obviously enough a very bad thing. Obesity is a real negative. That really irritates your whole body. Your body's full of fat tissue. The immune system can try and react to that

and go into overdrive in response to all the fat. So obesity is always a negative. The less weight you carry, the more healthy you will be anyway. It's numbers of calories by and large. In some ways, you're eating more than what you're actually... See, we've evolved to eat everything. Humans are omnivivores we will stuff our faces full of a gnu yeah i said gnu i don't know i said find a gnu you eat it you know yeah you're in a field eat all the turnips you know that's the way we used to be and our bodies can handle that we can handle a big mix

of foods you see we're very well adapted to different types of foods and and the in the old days of course like back in the stone age you'd gorge you see you eat as much as you can get your hands on and then run for a week to find the next canoe somewhere so it was always a case of overeating followed by periods of of um kind of you know not eating very much and starvation in a way you know and that seems to be beneficial in effect is that intermittent fasting absolutely there's good evidence for that now intermittent fasting is good. There's good evidence for that now. Intermittent fasting is good for you. So tell us, because that's becoming very popular at the moment.

What is intermittent fasting? Who's doing it and why? Well, I'll give you a great example now of this. Are you ready for yet another? How many facts do you people want tonight? This is fact number 79 from the immune system. If you starve yourself, your body starts to make things called ketone bodies. Has anybody ever heard of ketone bodies?

You begin making this stuff called ketone bodies and they go to your brain and they're a fuel source. The brain is greedy for food, obviously. And if you're starving, you need some source of energy and you make ketone bodies. Is ketone when you burn fat instead of carbohydrates? Absolutely. That's it, by precisely. The ketogenic

diet actually drives ketones. And there's three or four of them in your body, and guess what they are? Very anti-inflammatory. They suppress inflammation. So it's beneficial. So if you do have intermittent starving, not to be starving complete, that's bad, you'll make ketone bodies, and they're a source of fuel,

but secondly, they suppress inflammation. And if you have MS or arthritis or whatever it might be, you might see a benefit from these ketone bodies being made. So there's evidence that diet can manipulate the system in a way. Like, I have friends who are ketogenic because they want to lose weight. Yeah. And it just, like, literally their breakfast is eight rashers and half a pint of cream. Yeah.

Like, for real. That's their fucking, I'm not exaggerating. Eight rashers, half a pint of cream. Then for dinner, it might be three or four steaks and half a block of cheese. All this stuff that we're told, don't fucking do that, it'll give you heart disease. But the striking thing is the NIH in America,

who are the big article that we all go to, they're the world's most famous research institute. They were part of the food pyramid precisely. They've assessed every diet ever, okay? The Stone Age diet. Remember the Paleolithic diet? You live like a Stone Age person. The ketogenic diet.

The Atkins is a famous diet. Atkins is almost ketogenic. Yeah. Hardly any evidence any of those work amazingly to lose weight. And if you do lose weight, you put it back on again anyway. But it's anecdotal. Every single one of my friends who went ketogenic are just ridiculously thin yeah well that's the trouble but if they they'll switch back quite quickly you see and it's unhealthy for them the one organization and this isn't a sponsor now

tonight is weight watchers actually they get some credit because the type of diets they recommend are good uh there's a social group to support you as you're dieting so the nih recommends look at that as most of all don't start doing these things yourself because it may be bad for you basically so it's a very interesting part of the whole dieting issue who used Weight Watchers um do you know the director Kevin Smith he directed Dogman things like that he had a heart attack there about a year ago that nearly killed him and he he went from being about 40 stone down to being about 12 stone using Weight Watchers. Yeah, absolutely. He's their spokesperson.

You are in a cover band with a bunch of doctors. How did you know that? Tell us about your cover band that you're in with a lot of doctors. Yes, we are the Metabolics. Oh, we've got fans here it's like saying we are the Borg

you know yes it's me and me mates and to get a bit of release from our day to day lives we play a bit of music and we play covers and all the great crack all together so our drummer is Brian Murray who's a neurologist our bass player is an intensivist up in James's our guitarist is Colm,

the famous Colm O'Donnell, Ireland's leading neonatologist in Hollis Street. These guys are great to play with. If you have a heart attack, they can defibrillate with a guitar.

Bang! You can get an electric guitar into your heart. Bang! You're okay. So it's great crack all together. And we play lots of

charity gigs. You played in fucking Fiji. We played in Fiji. Can you believe it? It was the best thing ever. And that was the best trip and they paid for us to go to Fiji. We played in Fiji. Can you believe it? It was the best thing ever. And, you know, that was the best trip. And they paid for us to go to Fiji. See, no more than yourself.

You get the old corporate gig, right? There you go, yeah. And what are you doing next? You're doing something in... We are going to go to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Get this. Because there's a big oncology fan. We do stuff for charity, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, we're going to play at a ball. The St. Patrick's Day ball in Dar es Salaam. And all the Irish expats are coming and we're going to play the Fields of Adenrae 58 times. That's the plan. But yeah, we're going over to Dar es Salaam for a bit of crack. It'll be great fun. It's wonderful.

And remember, music is the best medicine as these guys tell me. There's no doubt about it. And we love it ourselves. You know yourself, when you get a crowd going and they love it. We play all the covers and we get them dancing stuff oh what a thrill for us to see them all enjoying themselves you know but our mission into one of our missions was like imagine a friday night somewhere in dublin and we play and then the people at the end of a tough week at work and they all join in and it's brilliant you know so that's the main function proving that

music is good for you i suppose you know there is good evidence for that by the way lots of studies have shown music is really good for you no question for your well didn't they music is shown to be really uh relevant when it comes to people with alzheimer's now absolutely they remember those songs from their youth i suppose they can sing all the lyrics still you know and get great relief from doing that so absolutely actually is alzheimer's something you deal with it absolutely now that's another what is Alzheimer's something you deal with at all in your work? Absolutely. What is Alzheimer's? Tell us. Another immune disease. What's happened really is in the past five or six years,

if you're an immunologist, you're in demand, which is always nice. Yeah. Every disease has some immune basis. It's become evidence for this. It used to be arthritis, but now it's Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's, a protein builds up in your brain called beta amyloid in the hippocampus where your memories are.

And the immune system tries to clear that, right, to suck it up, basically, and get rid of it, and goes into overdrive again. It's inflammation of the hippocampus is what Alzheimer's is. So suddenly now we're very interested in manipulating the immune response to target Alzheimer's. That's the disease we work on a lot. I have a hot take, which is I read that one of the biggest contributors to alzheimer's

is if the person doesn't get enough sleep throughout their life yes and i think us this fucking generation are going to present with incredibly high levels of alzheimer's because we're losing sleep hygiene because of our phones. Absolutely. Like, I literally, I used to get eight hours of sleep, lads. I haven't gotten eight hours of sleep since I got a fucking smartphone. I get between five and six because when I go to bed, I can't not check Instagram. Absolutely. Before, it used to be a book, and I'd get eight hours of sleep.

That's gone. Yeah, that's very important. In fact, for mental health in teenagers. There was a massive study done last year, and we're very well aware of this. 14 to 18-year-olds were asked, what's very important. In fact, for mental health in teenagers. There was a massive study done last year, and you may be very well aware of this. 14 to 18-year-olds were asked, what's your biggest worry? Now, it used to be getting pregnant

or me parents realising I've robbed the gin from the family drinks cabinet. This is true. This is what used to worry teenagers. Now it's anxiety, depression. And the incidence of that, as you know, is massive. And one reason, no doubt, is sleep disruption. And there was a study showing the average teenager checks their iphone twice during the night okay yeah now sleep

disruption is a massive risk factor for anxiety depression that's been shown for many many decades if you disrupt the sleep is a huge factor here you know so that that's an acute effect but after the numbers are still showing four to five hours a night that person has a huge risk of alzheimer's 20 30 years later. Yeah. And the example is Maggie Thatcher, strangely. They use her as the poster child. Because she was getting four hours of sleep. She was famous boasting, I got four hours a night, that's all I need.

Massive Alzheimer's as she was older. So there's evidence to connect those two together. And the brain, very interestingly, fact number 93. Are you ready? A big mystery in neuroscience is why do we sleep? It's a really dangerous thing to do because maybe you'll be eaten by a tiger. It's very vulnerable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there must be a biological reason for sleep. If you sleep, deprive an animal. Now, don't do this at home, children. Keep a mouse awake. He dies within three weeks. So sleep is very important for sustaining us. They've cracked what sleep is for. This is about two years ago this began when

you sleep little vessels in your brain open up they've shown this now in experiments and flush out the toxins that build up during the day during that you're buzzing your neurons yeah you get a byproduct and beta amyloid is one of them this protein and lo and behold you fall asleep especially during just the deepest part of sleep these little channels open they flush your brain out down to your liver and then you clean the brain okay hence not enough sleep means this stuff builds up it's like when you put the washing machine on when you go to bed at night if anybody ever does that it's a similar kind of thing you wash your brain as you stay and that seems to be a major function for sleep and it's very important then to get it now it varies by what you might get some get away

with five or six hours and they're quite happy. The average is like seven and a half, eight hours for most people. That's my fear. Like I can function on five and six. Because like, to be honest, if I didn't have to sleep, I wouldn't. Yeah. I genuinely, I just love being awake all the time. But I can happily function and be absolutely grand. But I am worried about my sleep.

Like I made a fucking New Year's resolution last year that I was going to get eight hours of sleep and my plan was I was going to have the phone on the other side of the room

and I was going to get an alarm clock but you can buy a cage I was in America just before Christmas you can buy a cage for your phone

that has an alarm attached to it I'm not joking you I fucking and you put the phone in the cage and it won't open until 8am. It's locked in there,

you know, so you set it, and you can't open it. So this may be the way to get away from the phone. But I guarantee you, every single person in this room, looks at their phone before they go to sleep, yeah?

Like, if you look at this, How many checks you're in the night? A lot of you, like up your jacket as well. But the worst is even, for me, it's,

so I will not wake up at four in the morning and then actually look at my messages or look at Twitter. I won't do that. But I will look just to see what the time is. But the fucking blue flash. Yeah. You know, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you look at your phone, that just wakes you up. Your brain thinks

it's the morning. Yeah. And you're waking up probably just after REM, which is when you're dreaming. You're meant to have a final phase after REM, which you're now being deprived of, you see, by waking up at that point. So it's really important, I think, for people to... But I saw a study someone did themselves at home,

and it fucking freaked me out, where they've made a small cut on their hand, like a scrape, right? And on week one, they gave themselves like five hours of sleep a night and they studied how long it took to heal they did it again a month later when they gave themselves eight hours of sleep the fucking wound healed in half the time right yes i didn't see that it's amazing yeah so that means that the eight hours of sleep actually healed the fucking wound

on the hand so if it's a cut on your hand well what about the rest of the body the other idea was by the way for an immunologist that maybe the immune system does its job best when you're asleep that it repairs that was that idea was there and there's some evidence of a circadian rhythm to the immune system by the way it's active at certain times in a 24-hour cycle and at night it seems to wake up slightly and then maybe it's repairing you know the injury and that's why arthritis people often are in real pain when they wake up. It's quite common, pain when you wake up. And that could be because the immune system has been slightly more active during the night.

And what is arthritis? Anything that ends in itis, by the way, means inflammation. So why do I have tinnitus and it's called itis and they don't know what the fuck it is? That's a good question. I don't know. Okay. But tinnitus is inflammation of whatever in the ear, you know. So any kind of... So arthritis is... Arth means your joint.

Colitis is your colon. Meningitis is your meninges, you know. Dermatitis is your skin. So itis means inflammation. And arthritis is inflammation of the joints. Could be knees, wrists, fingers, you know and anytime there's an inflammation does that mean the immune system is playing a part absolutely yes after because it goes into overdrive inflammation if you if you have a little blister on your

finger because you've cut yourself as a bug in there that's causing inflammation which is the troops coming out fixing the wound killing the bugs and that inflammation is beneficial you know because it's helping to fight the inflammation all that all the blood rushes in, for instance, goes red to bring the troops in, you see. And then it goes away and your finger is better. They sometimes call arthritis the wound that never heals. So your joint is now inflamed and never resolves, just keeps burning away in the background.

Wow. And that's why the off switches are so important, to figure out what's the off switch, because maybe it's an off switch that's defective to turn the thing off, you know. What can people do to... Because I think I'm getting it in one of my hands. What can people do to...

Is that because of masturbation? Probably. No, it's my left hand. You set me up for that joke earlier. We rehearsed that. Playing guitar. I think it's playing guitar. Playing guitar.

Yeah. Repetitive strain injury is a big one, by the way. I mean, many people who are violinists, they get arthritis in their hands because repeat use causes trauma in the joint. What can people do to reduce the pain of it, aside from painkillers? Well, I began working on rheumatoid arthritis in 1985. So that's probably before we're born here.

At that time, there were awful treatments for rheumatoid. They gave you painkillers like aspirin. They worked a bit. They gave them gold injections. Can you believe someone thought injecting gold, yeah, was a thing they used to do, didn't really work, you know. And if you were diagnosed with rheumatoid,

you were crippled within 15, 20 years. Wow. People in wheelchairs, right? Then the big breakthrough happens. And I knew the guy who was in London, back with Mark Fellman. He discovers a protein in the rheumatoid joint, which is overproduced, called TNF.

Strange name, but it's called TNF. And drug companies begin to block TNF, the biggest thing ever, rheumatoid joint, which is overproduced, called TNF. Strange name, but it's called TNF. And drug companies begin to block TNF, the biggest thing ever, rheumatoid. It is now no longer a disease that cripples you. If you block TNF, it slows down the whole disease process. Now, not everybody responds again. It's about a 60%, 70% response. But certainly, these anti-TNF drugs

have revolutionized rheumatoid. And we love that as an example, because, you know, where there was almost nothing, and now you have these, there's five anti-TNF drugs have revolutionized rheumatoid. We love that as an example, because where there was almost nothing, and now you have these five anti-TNFs on the market. One's made in Ireland, one's made in Sligo. AbbVie make one there, for instance. By Westlife. Yep, that's right.

In fact, all the main anti-arthritis drugs are made in Ireland now, and they're employing all those people. Talk about an advance. This guy, Fellman, my old boss in Cambridge discovered this as well and he really inspired me. So a group of scientists went after that pathway, if you like. And lo and behold, that was the pathway to target. So there's a really good example of an advance.

I heard that people in Cork are getting involuntary erections because they make Viagra there. Is that true? That's true. I get one myself every time. I'm so excited to go to Cork. No, I'm not sure that's true.

Remember in England, I used to live near the Mars factory. You'd smell Mars bars in the air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe... Maybe the smell of Viagra is reminding them of Bonners. Well, of course, this explains that phrase, up Ck. That's a well-known joke,

if you're a confederate. But I remember vividly, when I was in London, I did my PhD in pharmacology, which is the science of drugs. There were people looking for Viagra, not looking to treat themselves now, but erectile dysfunction

is a serious matter, actually. We don't laugh at it, but it's quite diabetic-skidding. They were looking for ways to treat erectile dysfunction. But now it's grand. That was a breakthrough. Viagra was a breakthrough. Big breakthrough. People used to have to get cock rings. They did.

They did. A ring around their mickey. Yeah. That's right. Before Viagra, one of the treatments was papaverine, which is an extract of pepper, which you would inject into the corpus cavernosa, is the technical term for, you know, that bit. You would get an erection

for a whole day, it wouldn't go away, like, it would be a 24-hour erection. And I met the guy who discovered that, and he wrote a review about this, he said, he said, I injected myself, this is him writing with paparine, and I sustained an erection, in spite of two worrying phone calls, was how he put it.

Interestingly, luckily, Viagra came along and did away with Maintain an erection in spite of two worrying phone calls. That's how we put it. Interestingly. Luckily, Viagra came along and did away with papaverie. Interestingly, in the early days of porn films in the 70s, if someone was having trouble maintaining an erection, they'd get Tabasco sauce and rub it on their anus. Seriously. And that used to keep them up. The fright. Do you reckon

it's... Absolutely. There's extracts in pepper and these spices that promote an erection. But you know how Varga was discovered? Why? A guy called Oshirov discovered it. I've met this guy as well. He was actually trying to make a drug for an angina. Or as my maiden aunt once said, I've got vagina.

Anyway, it was opening blood vessels. The idea of angina is to get constriction of blood vessels and he was trying to find a drug to open up blood vessels in your heart. He begins a trial, mainly with men for some reason. Often trials are done interestingly

with men, not women, which is the peculiar thing. No, that's the thing. There's a lot of gender critique of medicine. It's a huge issue now actually, a huge issue at the moment to do trials with both men and women um anyway gave these men the drug and then the nurse working for him noticed the men weren't returning the extra tablets so often you give a few extra just in case and they weren't bringing them back and the nurse

yet again a woman not getting the credit as we heard earlier it was a woman who discovered the aids virus um her name was zanessi actually she worked with montana anyway the nurse spots this Again, a woman not getting the credit, as we heard earlier. It was a woman who discovered the AIDS virus. Her name was Zanessi. Actually, she worked with Montagnier. Anyway, the nurse spots this and asks the man, why aren't you giving the drugs back? Interesting side effect, this guy said. I've noticed something interesting.

And lo and behold, that's it. And in fact, it was opening blood vessels, not so much in the heart. It was opening them in the penis. And it was totally accidental. He just found a blood vessel relaxer that worked in the penis and not the heart strangely you know and lo and behold now usher off that drug made i think one billion dollars in its second year on the market a huge amount of money and no man they thought there was no incidence of this in the humans so nobody admits of it you know it opened up a massive market and pfizer made it but here's the thing i know loads of lads who take Viagra. None of them have erectile

dysfunction. It's just so they can get a boner while they're on loads of coke. Anyone I know who's doing it, why do you have Viagra? Oh, sorry. No, no, no. I'm just doing a load of coke and I can't get the horn. Or they get Speed Mickey. Speed Mickey? Is it called Speed Mickey? No one's doing speed anymore.

But in the days when people would do speed, it's been replaced by coke. There would be a phenomenon known as speed Mickey, which is... Do you know like when you've got a really bad flu and you kind of look down at your dick and go, oh my God, I didn't think it could get that small. So that's what speed Mickey is.

It's when it inverts. A question was put in by the comedian PJ Gallagher. Oh, yeah. We know PJ. And PJ says, Luke is the only person I have ever met that has one of those things in his telly to count viewership figures on RTE.

That's right. What the fuck is that? We're the Nielsen family. The Nielsen organisation approached us about four or five years ago. Does anyone have a box on their telly? No. Anybody got one?

Maybe that is rare. This is how RTE know how many people view things. That's right. There's like 400 boxes in Ireland. And based on what those 400 boxes watch, that's where they get viewership figures from. This is why Blind Boy's my friend. Will you watch this next week he says.

Well I was thinking yeah. I fucking will. I think you're right though. There's not that many. Now my wife's there. I think the numbers you represent like 20,000 people or something. So if I watch something it's like 20,000 people. And you've got a thing on your TV and a little handheld a massively ancient piece of technology,

and you press your name, and then your name, and they are watching that show. And every month, Nielsen sends us letters. And do you actually use it? Do you actually? We do.

My son, Sam, he's very particular. Oh, we've got to push the button down. We've got to be doing this properly. So it's a funny one. And then every so often, they send us little gifts to thank us in the Nielsen newsletter.

So we are, we empower. How did you get selected? I thought, it's a mystery to me. It's a mystery to me. How long has it been in the gaff? It's a good few years, five or six years now we've had it in the gaff. We're following it diligently to make sure that we represent the Irish people

properly, you know. Now I'm mainly watching reruns of Friends the whole time, so. It's not great for RTE, shall we say. But the irony is, there's some poor prick up an rte going oh we better get a load more friends now and it's just because of you that's an influential i am yeah that's it yeah um okay one thing i want to talk about is and we haven't gotten onto it antibiotic resistance yeah and when i was saying earlier about people in Cork getting sympathetic boners from

the factory, there is an actual fear of runoff from pharmaceutical companies specifically putting antibiotics into water and this causing all of us to be resistant. What is antibiotic resistance? And some people are going, fuck it, this could be an

apocalypse situation. Is that a fear that you have? And again, you've got massive consensus on this. See, scientists often disagree with each other, by the way. We love disputation and we love being criticised. Honestly, we do. Because you always challenge the guy. Show me the evidence.

I don't believe in that experiment. I've got my own. And we disagree a lot. And then you get to the truth eventually. So when you see a consensus around something, among something, you thought, this must be true. Because they're hard asses, basically. Massive consensus about two

things now. One is, the anti-vaxxers are wrong. No question about that. That's for definite, right? There's no question about that. And the second one is, there are bugs emerging that resist antibiotics. Now, if that becomes a reality, and it is a big fear, you go back

to the Dark Ages, which means people die of diphtheria, they die of cholera, they die of all these infections again. Are these new versions of bugs that already exist? They've mutated to dodge the bullet, you see. What have you seen? What has the science community seen? Well, one example is TB.

TB was the scourge of Ireland. Our great-grandparents would remember this as a horrifying disease. My dad had it. My dad had itparents would remember this as a horrifying disease. Especially in Limerick. My dad had it. My dad had it. My mother's ma died from it. And it was a disease of poverty, mainly, actually.

It was poverty. So, again, antibiotics kill TB. It's brilliant. Now, in India and places, we're seeing emergence. Now, the reason why this happens is overuse of antibiotics, because now some of them can mutate. There's pressure on them because of the antibiotics, and they can dodge it and now they

begin to become resistant or indeed run off absolutely. There's more antibiotics. If you take a sample of the Liffey, you'll find antibiotics in the Liffey water. That's mainly agricultural use. That's a big fear there. Now we're seeing this emergence of these resistant strains. Now, the second thing is can

drug companies keep up with this and make new ones? Many of them aren't because there's no money in it and they're reluctant. More and more drug companies keep up with this and make new ones you see and many of them aren't because there's no money in it and they're reluctant but more and more drug companies are switching to this because they're frightened as well and there will be hopefully we'll stay ahead of the the curve here in a way you know and then like the welcome trust in london is the biggest charity actually they're investing in this as well so it's a real fear we're trying to make sure that we can dodge it but one one answer is don't use as many you know obviously overuse is a factor here like and that will help we're all young people in the room like i mean we shouldn't be taking antibiotics for a sore throat and things like that if we're

otherwise healthy well they are wonder drugs but there's no question if you go to your gp and they give you one as i said earlier it's good you know because without these people die you know and there was massive the main cause of death 100 years ago was infections, and that was cracked by antibiotics. So they're a very powerful drug. But again, they get overused, I suppose, and the downside is resistance. This is anecdotal now, but we'll say last year... So I was doing grand for a couple of years with...

If I was getting a sore throat or I was getting a chest infection, I was fighting it off myself and I was fine. Last year, because I was under so much fucking pressure from work I couldn't afford a sore throat right so I went to the doctor he was like you don't need antibiotics he said give me the fucking antibiotics he said grand took them I've had the worst year of

continual sore throat continual chest infections and the ear but it is did I weaken my immune system by that dose of antibiotics? I don't know. This year I'm grand. What I'm doing this year is, and it's bizarrely working,

any time I feel a sore throat, I take turmeric, ginger and orange juice and I'm grand. Yes, yeah. It works. I don't know why. Well, as I said, we have great immune systems, you know. They're very sophisticated. We should be able to fight infections anyway, you know, unless you're run down or, as we said earlier, stressed,

that has a negative effect. Or if you hammer the head out of your body, remember, I mean, you know, alcoholics get infections all the time, you know, because you're beating up your immune system there. But normally, if you have a reasonably healthy life, you know, and take a bit of exercise,

the usual things, your immune system will work and will fight the infection. If you get an infection though, go to see your doctor definitely. Of course, yeah. Because then these antibiotics will help and there'll be a way to treat the infection you see and and we

know if you don't do that what happened 100 years ago people died you know especially children by the way it's very important so so these things work you know they're a great advance but again a bit of caution in terms of overuse is a negative i guess um can you talk about we said the history of new diseases that emerged when europe met america yes 14th century well it went badly for the native americans is the first horse yeah because we brought diseases over to them and smallpox massively wiped out many native americans there was no smallpox in north america they reckon very little anyway and there was a naive population never before exposed you know died in their droves of smallpox it's incredible and of course what what did the europeans is great you know but they gave

them all they gave us syphilis they did indeed absolutely i'm glad you brought that up now let's move on to stds always a cheery topic a horrible disease syphilis again antibiotics work in syphilis it's wonderful syphilis... Have you ever seen photographs of people with advanced syphilis 100 years ago? Yeah, tertiary syphilis. They literally look like zombies. It would cause your entire face to fall off. Like, terrifying stuff.

And this was 100 years ago. Why is that not happening anymore? Well, again, antibiotics, you see. If you go to a clinic with an STD, always go to the clinic, remember? Yeah. And important, this is a very important thing, a lot of lads i know won't

go to the clinic because they're of the impression that they get a cocktail umbrella and stick it down your cock that's 2002 shit that's fucking 9-11 shit but blind boy you can be extra for that you can piss into a cup now they don't do that thing anymore where they put a swab down your dick so don't be afraid of that you gotta go because you might because you might spread it, you see, as well, remember. Absolutely. And then these antibiotics work great for syphilis. There's a worry about gonorrhea.

There's a strain emerging. These were horrible diseases. Where is gonorrhea emerging as an antibiotic resistance? In the developing world, mainly, is where these resistance strains are emerging.

Partly because of lack of treatment strains. If one emerges there and isn't treated, then you're in trouble or whatever in other ways. It begins to spread, yes. So that's one place. But in North America, there's a fear of treatment strange if one emerges there and isn't treated then you know then you're in trouble or whatever in other ways it begins to spread so that's one place

but in North America there's a fear of gonorrhea the incidence is going up and they're having more trouble there's a range of antibiotics you see a doctor can try a whole set of them and try to find one that works

and finally gets one that works you know they found ones which don't work for gonorrhea you know and that's a worry because that might now begin to dominate

and what because again gonorrhea is one of these ones that someone gets it and they're grand yeah what's gonorrhea like if you don't treat it like what happens to you it can kill you it can be really you can get sepsis from gonorrhea it can go into overdrive now most people again will get over it after a period of illness you know but at its worst case it's it's lethal you know so again it's gonna be very careful the big the big fear of all infections is the thing called sepsis, where you get an absolute infection all over your body.

Your blood is now infected. Is that what sepsis is? That's what sepsis is. And the whole body becomes massively inflamed. That sounds like no crack. Because now it's not crack at all. And you get liver, kidney failure. Does sepsis happen in the developed world?

Absolutely. You know in hospitals, MRSA kills people. Is that tetanus? No, tetanus, that's a different thing. Okay. But sepsis, any bacteria if it goes into your bloodstream becomes dangerous. Because it goes everywhere. Your immune system's in your bloodstream and it goes into

overdrive and now your whole body, effectively your liver and your kidney become freely inflamed and your blood pressure drops and it kills, even now in Irish hospitals, sepsis is a cause of death. And is sepsis what happens when, like, could you have a sore throat, and that's untreated, and then that gets into your bloodstream? Absolutely. Any infection of bacteria

can turn into, mainly of bacteria, can turn into sepsis. How do you stop that happening, and who's at risk? Well, this is one thing I work on a lot in my lab, to be honest. We've got a big interest in arthritis, but we also work on sepsis a lot. So, about 20 years ago, a guy in the US discovers what part of the immune system is activated during sepsis.

He discovers the on switch and he wins the Nobel Prize. His name was Bruce Boykler. And he wins the Nobel Prize, I think it was 2012, for that discovery. So we now knew what was being flipped during sepsis. And now drug companies want to try and block that in various ways and limit that response. But it's a mystery. Some people, young people especially, they're in hospital, they've got a regular infection. And for some reason, that goes into overdrive

and begins to get a foothold. And once it starts to roll, it's very hard to stop. And of course, the doctors are devastated. They want to try and stop this. They want to treat them in various ways. And it's kind of relentless. And it's a big effort. They've spent billions on trying to stop sepsis.

It kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. It's a huge thing. And they still haven't got there yet. There's many trials have failed. There's big disappointment in sepsis over the years. So it's been a tricky one. But again, it's an important one because so many people die of it. One person asked, are we any closer to curing herpes?

This conversation never gets any easier. Herpes? Yeah. Yeah. That always comes up, I've noticed. Well, of course, it depends on what type of herpes, doesn't it? You know, remember the old lip stuff? Remember you get a cold sore?

Yeah. Herpes is a type of cold sore. There's different types of herpes viruses. That one, great breakthrough there. When I was a kid, there was no treatment for cold sores. You know, you just grew and it was awful. Now, a little drug blocks the virus in the lesion and stops it dividing. You know, you can buy it in the pharmacy very cheap now, you know.

The other types of herpes, I'm not going to give the trade name um but there's a few of them on sale for her you know if you've never had a cold sore oh yeah okay so like cold sore treatment cold sore yeah precisely yeah i can't remember anyway the other types that are more difficult the ones the ones that um cause herpes in your genitals yeah genital herpes as it's called that's a bit trickier to treat still again, that'll be self-resolving often. These things go away. But is herpes not like you have it and that's it, you're fucked for the rest of your life? No, the problem is it goes latent.

Now, there is a cunning virus for you. It lives in your neurons, in your skin, in your body. It lives there, latent, and then comes alive at certain times. And stress brings it out, by the way. You know, the one that causes herpes simplex. Stress means the thing now wakes up and now infects your mouth. So a person who has genital herpes

can go 10 years with nothing and then it flares up? Flares up, yeah. And the flare-up can be because of stress. And does that person then have to never have unprotected sex again? You've got to be careful, precisely. And it goes latent again then, by the way. So it goes in and out of latency with herpes.

Again, bringing it back to early porn. Look at a couple of early porn films and you see some interesting things around people's arses. Yeah. I'm doing this as part of a research for the podcast, lads. There's going to be a podcast

in two weeks where I found a really, really, really important early disco producer who was so underground that the only way he got his music out there was through porn films.

So that's why I'm doing this, looking at all the 60s and 70s porn. We can use this. And noticing, is that herpes on that man's arse? Well, I'm very happy we can use these educational tools now, can't we? Let the students look at this early porn.

They can see what's going on. we're banging soundtracks um what about uh when people take things like echinacea oh yeah is that bullshit is it there's evidence for that that's one of the good things the trouble with this is if you go into a health food shop right and not a lot of stuff that's on sale there isn't much evidence behind them. Like, when you go to Holland and Barrett, like, anything in Holland and Barrett, you buy it, and at the back of it, it says, this doesn't actually do what we say it does, but you can take it if you want.

Everything there. Yeah, yeah. That's right. It's kind of a, you know, they worry that they're going to get sued, I suppose. But most of those things, there's anecdotal evidence, maybe, you know. But remember, many drugs came from plants.

Aspirin is a good example. But that came from willow bark, you know. So there's a history of plants plants. Aspirin is a good example, but that came from willow bark. So there's a history of plants doing stuff. Of course, the ancient people only had plants. If you go back 500 years, in Trinity, when our medical school was founded, it was 1711, all they had were plant extracts.

There was no drugs and there was a botany part of the medical school. So plant extracts do work to some extent, you see. But there's no evidence for many of them sadly right the second month when i began my phd my first project in london was on feverfew now feverfew is a herbal remedy uh through antiquity for migraine for my job was can you find the active ingredient in feverfew and i spent three or four months on this got nowhere and i said feck this for a game of soldiers i'm not going to work on this anymore but one thing we found was we took 10 samples of fever few from health food shops

not a single one of fever in them you know okay so you're worried about the regulation of these things that's one negative aspect but echinacea let's get back to it there were loads of studies on that actually and that good evidence and there's some evidence that it decreases the time with the cold so i won't prevent it but if you feel a cold coming on and you take some echinacea, instead of the cold lasting for, say, four days, it might last for two. So there's some evidence for that, they reckon, at the moment. And that's the recommendation. But I won't stop you getting a cold.

Are you looking into cannabis at all in any of the work you do? Absolutely. Every day I smoke. No, I don't. That is a wonder thing. Tell us about that. Tell us about cannabis. The danger is let's not be too careful here. Do what a wonder thing. Tell us about that. Tell us about cannabis. There's dangers.

Let's not be too careful here. Do what you fucking want. You're adults. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cannabis was banned for racist reasons in America. That's the first thing. So it was called cannabis in North America,

and then the Mexicans began arriving. They called it marijuana, which means Mary Jane. They just called it, what was the name? And they began banning it to torment the Mexican workers that was the reason why it got banned as a racist thing initially there was never any evidence

that cannabis was really dangerous as such now obviously it's dangerous the stronger stuff is dangerous no question about that the brain the second

the only other concern we have is in the teenage brain it can be problematic because that's still getting wired any drug in a teenage brain has to be seen as bad because it changes the wiring and that can last for life.

So they're the only fears. Everything else, if you're an adult, and it's legal now, I think, in, is it 14 states in North America? In California, man, I was like walking into a cheese shop. But literally saying to them, I want to feel like this, this, and this.

And they go, there you go, that's a fiver. I'm angry about it. Yeah, yeah. It was amazing. And blind boy, Americans are so up their own tight asses, aren't they? How come it got illegal there first?

I've asked people this. There's two reasons. One is black, the black community were being discriminated against. Yeah. It was three strikes and you're out in America.

If you were caught a third time with cannabis, you went to a lifetime jail sentence. Yeah. And liberals in America, now we can't have this. It's unfair against the black community. That was one reason.

Yeah. They could tax it with a second. They're making a fortune off cannabis now. It's taxed. They're making a fortune but you can't use a credit card because the cannabis, so the dispensaries are legal on a state level but it's still illegal on a federal level. So they have

difficulty bringing their cash to federal banks. So all the cannabis companies are left with massive amounts of cash. You can't pay with a card right a bill has gone through congress in november by the way they're about to legalize it federally it may become legal but the thing about it is very interesting is the first ever drug are you ready for what fact are we on now the first ever drug in history is a hieroglyph from ancient egypt of a guy taking cannabis for eye inflammation and hemorrhoids. It was known to be anti-inflammatory

by ancient people for a long time. It was called hemp in those days. And what's the hieroglyph? Is it a guy with a bong? You'd wonder what the Egyptians were doing. But they were taking cannabis anyway way back in ancient times. It was known to be very anti-inflammatory, right? And then we eventually purify from cannabis what the active ingredients are. they're called cannabinoids and these are potent anti-inflammatory molecules and you could see them now being developed as companies now developing them and the purified stuff you know now other people realized it was very good for stopping muscle spasm it was a really beneficial of ms patients

actually the first to go after this and it works on muscle spasm it works on epilepsy in children it's not not the weed itself, but extracts. So we know an awful lot more about the chemistry of what's in cannabis. The only psychedelic or psychoactive part is THC. That's the one cannabinoid that gives you the euphoric effect. The other cannabinoids don't have that effect as much. So a lot going on there, I think. And I think, in my view, it's only a matter of time before it's legal everywhere.

Let me give you one more fact on this. So you know the case to legalize drugs is being debated in my in my next book by the way i'm plugging oh you have a book coming out yeah well i'm writing at the moment i've got a chapter on the science behind why drugs should be legal now now it's the lesser of two evils kind of argument in truth but there's many people advocating now now one argument is this if they made drugs legal in america one third of crime would go away immediately. That's a big one benefit. Secondly, the DEA in America, it costs $50 billion

a year to run the Drug Enforcement Agency. $50 billion. They make no difference. It's rampant. If they taxed it, they'd make $50 billion. There'd be a net gain of $100 billion to invest in harm reduction anyway, in addiction programmes and so on. That's the cases now to look at this more closely, I think. And if you want to see it work and just look at portugal portugal since the year 2000

they have barely any deaths from heroin because they have safe injection heroin isn't even criminalized if you're a user no one goes to jail what they do is they'll offer you treatment and they don't have deaths from heroin that's right in ireland we have deaths from fucking heroin i mean thank fuck they're after opening up an injection or they will be opening up an injection center in dublin but they look at it as a health problem and not a crime absolutely yeah i'm gonna open up the questions to the audience now uh if anyone has a question it can be about absolutely anything any questions hold on we give you the mic. Would the tumors caused from neurofibromatosis be the same as cancer tumors?

Yes, that's a type of cancer. Absolutely. It's similar. Yeah, it's an overgrowth. So what is the name of that, Luke? I didn't hear it. Neurofibromatosis. Okay.

So any kind of... Well, the trouble is there's two types of tumors in a way. One that are benign and some are malignant. The malignant ones will spread into your liver and your kidney and kill you neurofibromatosis doesn't but it just grows so big it causes all the symptoms you know so there's the similarities between those two it wouldn't be classified as cancer i don't think as such but it's got it's got similar features any other questions over here hold on we give you the mic, brother. How would you convince a staunch anti-vaxxer that they're wrong?

Oh, yes. Good question, brother. That's a really important... I'm glad you've asked. That's like a plant. That's a really important question. We worry about this. If you're an immunologist, you see, this really worries you because our job is to develop new vaccines and so on.

It's very difficult and very complicated, actually. There's all kinds of reasons why people say, I don't want to vaccinate my child. So the first thing is to accept that, that some parents are reluctant. They don't want to bring a little healthy baby into a doctor with a needle, you know, and that they're slightly reluctant.

So you've got to accept that that's the way it's going to be, right? And then you've got to use just reason as best you can and give the evidence. And the evidence I give is really clear cut. I mean, in 1964, 63, there was no measles vaccine in America. 500,000 children got measles that year. One in three had serious complications.

Tens of thousands went deaf because of the measles, right? The vaccine program began. Two years later, 61 cases in America. That's the power of vaccines, you know? And you give someone that argument and you say, okay, there's a risk of your child having a reaction, of course. It's very rare because it's extremely rare to see a reaction. It does happen. You just accept that. It is

reality, but it's very, very rare. The chance of your child picking up measles or any of these diseases is much higher and will cause serious damage to your child. So the question is, do you want to protect your child? They used to say things like, all the experts say it's great. So the World Health, do you want to protect your child? The other thing, they used to say things like, oh, all the experts say it's great. So the World Health Organization and all the doctors.

Some people didn't like to hear that and didn't know. I don't trust those experts. It was kind of an anti-expert thing. So that doesn't really work. And in America now, they give the GPs, they're called family doctors there, what to say to patients or parents, just really sort of to win them over.

This is very amusing. Tone of voice is everything. It's gentleness and just a bit of an awareness of it. And those are the things people are doing. But for me, reasonable people can look at the evidence and accept vaccination has to be absolutely, you know, essential for many people. The second thing that we tell people is, okay, you mightn't want to vaccinate your child because you worry the child will be harmed. But if the rate of infection goes below a certain percent in the

community, so for example, if 95% of people, if 5% are infected with measles at a 95%, that's enough to spread, right? Older people and babies, and they die of measles. So in other words, this is called herd immunity. must get over 95 vaccination to stop old people and babies dying of measles so it's not just about you then it's about it's about other people you're harming others then by not

vaccinating your child and those are the arguments we use now they are they working is the question there's still a rate of vaccine denial going on you know and it hasn't really changed in the past couple of years so maybe we need other ways to do it but but these are the current ways that people are trying and we're hopeful it'll work you know uh are you seeing like on the ground or on the world the actual impact of the rising anti-vax movement are you seeing people getting sick because of this yeah but measles is the big one the incidence of measles for the first time ever has gone over a certain limit in the u.s now and it's beginning in Europe as well. So parents are not

vaccinating against measles because of this fear. So we will see measles come back now. And the other argument I've heard of other people who remember what it was like,

there were hospitals in London and Dublin just for deaf kids who got deafness because of measles. And that went away with vaccines. So this kind of thing.

You make those arguments. But the worry would be measles will come back and that's the number one they're most concerned about because the link to autism you see was the thing that frightened everybody was there's no evidence for that by the way at all actually yeah but that frightened people any anti-vaxxer i speak to they go autism autism autism is there no is that bullshit we never even met we don't know not we don't even mention it nowadays because it might be oh hang on a minute there might be a link. Absolute bullshit. It was the worst ever example of a fraud guy, Wakefield,

who claimed this had a paper. The other critic of the journal that published it, the Lancet, what were they thinking of in a way? So he published it. His paper comes out. Now, science wants the truth, remember. Oh, this could be true. Everybody tries to reproduce that paper.

The Swedes look at babies. I think something like 12 million MMR vaccinated children wants the truth remember oh this could be true everybody tries to reproduce that paper the swedes look at babies you know i think something like 12 million mmr vaccinated children were looked at and there was no link to autism at all so they could prove them quite quickly there was no link and he had then either been economically with the truth or it turns out there's evidence that wakefield was being paid by lawyers of parents to sue the vaccine manufacturer that's a massive conflict of interest there's all there's all these reasons to to to have to conclude that there's nothing in it you know but the trouble is autism is a terrifying condition and no parent wants to risk that in their children so yeah but the evidence absolutely no evidence of a link with

autism at all any other questions up here i wonder have you heard much about wim hof he's a dutch guy he uses cold water exposure breath work and meditation and he says he can tap into his autoimmune system and uh there's been a lot of studies done on him i think he's an amazing character absolutely no that's a great one to ask tell us about it because i've heard his name but i've never googled him well but it's the broader bit of this is the cold immersion thing, you see. And there's been evidence for that for a long time, actually, anyway. And people didn't really believe it. He was a big advocate of it, you know.

And now the evidence is compelling. Again, you can't beat the Scandinavians. They study this in great detail. Winter swimmers are very healthy people. Is that why the happy pair are fantastically healthy men? Hop into the river every morning or into the ocean. Well, talk about a simple thing to do.

I mean, you know, there's a social element. You go down with your buddies or your friends and you all jump in together. Oh, Jesus Christ, praise God. And you come out, you know, this boosts all these endorphins

and there's all these effects on your immune system that are beneficial. Really? Absolutely. So that's a proven one that we like. If everyone here was like, fuck it, I'll have a cold shower. Well, now there's a good one that we like if we if everyone here was like fucking i'll

have a cold shower well now there's a good question they haven't done i i think oh you must immerse i think the social bits as important potential do you think social because every morning you're mixing with humans and mixing germs absolutely no no you're just just hanging out with people the social activity you're just just improving the mood and you're in you're in this people are terrified of it i've ever done it it's fucking awful i haven't done that but i tell you what i like i will get up in the morning and go for a run even if it's raining yes freezing cold and i find when i do that nothing can stress me for the rest of the day because i've ran in the freezing rain rock city you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com and you're without food just running in the rain and the vim half you're meditating when you're running kind of your mind is somewhere else it's a very important thing to do by the way as well to get your mind off your worries you know been studied look into

meditation and immune system or even um like like i said i'm worried about the amount of sleep i get but i do meditate yeah has anything there's not as much on actually studying meditation as a way to boost the immune system to my knowledge i don't there's not as much as on the cold immersion thing for instance there's some studies on it but not as much but we do know that getting your mind into a different place is beneficial that's not as we all know anyway you know and. And that can be music, it can be... You know, one of the big ones is joining a choir. There's a number of really compelling studies.

If you're in a choir, you get a lot less risk of all these different diseases, less Alzheimer's, less depression, you know. And the reason is you're focusing on the music and you're concentrating on it. You're in a group, again, the social bit's very important, you know. And you're lifted by the music and then the audience enjoy it as well. So there's lots of beneficial effects of being in a choir

i think a lot of it is like meditation though you know it is actually getting your mind into a better place for a while and then back to your day-to-day worries after you see and cold immersion and meditation is probably achieving that as well it may be you can jump into the sea on your own i don't nobody's compared it but but people suspect it's the social aspect is beneficial what about um the fact that you get all that salt water going through your nose and you're cleaning out you never know you never know that can be part of it as well exactly a saline thing the saline thing yeah the other great one i like on this though is is alcohol good for you right now we've studied this a lot i have studied myself a lot, N equals one, the hangovers can be terrible, right?

But forgetting that, there was lots of studies showing that moderate alcohol was good for you, okay? So if low alcohol isn't great, too much is definitely not good. It's in the middle, you know? Now, in the middle means two glasses of wine a day, say, or a pint a day.

That kind of level was beneficial, it seems. And then lots of studies have proven this. This is true, right? The question then was, was it the alcohol that was beneficial or what was the reason and again it was social activity you were meeting your mates and having a drink you know having a conversation and all that kind of thing you know and that was the benefit it wasn't actually necessarily the alcohol that was beneficial at all too much social media is probably fucking us all up then because you're not absolutely that's a big negative with social media it's not

the same by any means. There could be something in the alcohol because the one drink didn't do it and you're still with your friends, I suppose. So alcohol does relax you a little bit and that might open up some of these pathways and they're beneficial. But the main function is social. There's a theory that the scientific

enlightenment of the 17th century happened when coffee became available in uh europe yeah because again stop drinking beer and they socialized and they met up drinking coffee in dublin as well but it's fucking caused them to think more rather than to get slower with the drink yeah absolutely and that's exactly what the quakers they want to have coffee instead of alcohol you see so and then all these benefits i think it was mainly again people meeting and talking about things and you know coming up with plans together we're a very social species remember and that's

why loneliness and all that that's a massive negative because we evolved to be social you know to be with each other like we are tonight for instance you know so it's a wonderful thing loneliness is a scourge and again the body doesn't like it and goes into this different state and then it's negative you know so i think um the coffee bit and the alcohol is definitely to do with social bonding and what is anything um i'll take one more question what have we got preferably a bit of gender balance we've had one woman and two boys there we go yonder um how does cystic fibrosis work oh yeah that's well that's a great question to ask to be honest in ireland especially so now again i've met the people who i lucky enough, I'm old enough to meet some of the people who made these discoveries in a way. So they knew it was a lung disease, obviously.

That was about 50 years ago. And then they find there's a protein in the lung that controls salt balance in your lung. And we all have this protein, and it keeps the salt levels low, if you like, in kilter. CF is a mutation in the gene for those proteins that regulate salt and they're broken now and you can't regulate salt in your lungs the salt builds up mucus spills up and their bacteria start to grow there in these biofilms and that really irritates the lungs you know so the lung the cysts are caused by bacteria fibrosis is an inflammatory reaction happens and tries to repair it and all this tissue grows and

the lungs are eventually destroyed right and that was known about maybe 25 30 years ago that suggested a therapy so if we could correct the gene for that protein we would fix it and stop it in its tracks and there are gene therapy trials happening now to correct that genetic difference in people who carry that mutation you see but more importantly a company called vertex who i'm familiar with in in boston they discovered a drug that could bind the protein that was broken and get it to work properly it's amazing and there's a tablet you take now it hits off the damaged protein now begins to work properly and that's the big breakthrough that's called kaleidoco and now trifecta is the follow-on and that's a slightly different one but it's all about getting the broken proteins

to work properly. There's another one as well. There's two of them. And get them to work properly, right? And now that's the treatment that's been approved. So the vista for CF has changed massively because of the Vertex's discovery. And they were getting like 80% efficacy

in the trials in patients. So again, you can see now how that would be a big breakthrough because now the broken protein begins to do its job. And the salt balance is restored in the lungs. that's why we like cf as an example because all those years of effort have finally yielded a medicine now getting back to our first question why was the price of this is expensive you know um the hsc so they take it on them which is the big news for cystic fibrosis so it's fantastic i think it's about 400 grand a patient

or something um but still hf but if the government pays for it, who gives a shit? I want my fucking taxes to go to that. But seriously, that's what I want my taxes to go to. If you're a CF sufferer, you're a massive cost on the health service anyway. They can counterbalance that, you see, with the drug now. Less time in hospital anyway. Can you talk about, this is something that's very interesting about cystic fibrosis,

the evolutionary genetic trade-off that would create something like cystic fibrosis? Absolutely. That's-off that would create something like cystic fibrosis. Absolutely. That's a big question because it does persist in the population. It's unusual that you'd see that gene persisting because the people should die off, basically. I know it sounds a bit harsh,

but they shouldn't be procreating because they've got an illness. If you're heterozygous, which means you carry one broken one and one that works, that seems to give a slight advantage to you. We've got two couples of every gene in our body, a slight advantage to you if you have two here we got two two couples every gene in our body as you may know if you carry two broken ones you get cystic fibrosis but some people carry a broken one and one that works and they have increased fertility the salt balance interestingly in their seminal plasma the men they're a bit more fertile

and it'll be a fertility thing secondly they seem to resist cholera that's a strange one they seem more whatever their lungs are they get less cholera. That's a strange one. They seem more, whatever their lungs are, they get less cholera for whatever reason. So that could be why that gene persisted. The danger is when you carry both broken types, you get cystic fibrosis. I heard that cystic fibrosis evolved

at a time in, we'll say hundreds of thousands of years ago when we were in Africa. Cholera was killing, it was such a deadly killer that it was a beneficial trade-off. Absolutely. That's why it persisted in that population.

Some people carry the broken one and then you can get away with it. Let's say the ones who have two broken copies, they were dying anyway, sadly. That didn't really matter. The ones with one broken were working. They were surviving cholera. And then you can see it persisting.

That may be why it happened, we think. All right, so lads, it's nearly 11. Thank you so much to Luke O O'Neill that was fucking incredibly interesting and it was so much crack and isn't it lovely isn't it just

lovely to have someone speak about really, really complex fucking things and to be like, I understand all of this. Isn't that a fucking pleasure? So thank you. And let's thank you to Ali for being so sound. It was a lovely evening. All right, have a good night.