Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Parasite makes men dumb, women sexy

I hope you find the Toxoplasmosis story as strangely fascinating as I do. Here are some links to other articles and news reports if you want to read a little further.

Toxoplasmosis changing human behavior was reported on by the Times (archived here) and, more sensationally, by the Australian Sydney Morning Herald with the great headline 'Parasite makes men dumb, women sexy'.

For such an amazing result the Toxoplasmosis/traffic accident story was largely ignored by the press although the BBC did do a news story. The Czech traffic accident survey has now been repeated in Turkey with essentially the same result.

I don't quite know what to make of this one. Apparently women affected with Toxoplasmosis are more likely to have sons than daughters.

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