Bees help in the battle against tuberculosis

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Thu, 27 Oct 2011 6:38a.m.

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It's no surprise bees have extraordinary noses, since they can detect pollen from a mile away.
It's no surprise bees have extraordinary noses, since they can detect pollen from a mile away.

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28 Nov 2011 08:58a.m.

Marilyn wrote:

Tuberculosis is a disease of deficiency. It can be both prevented and 100% cured with vitamin D, so there is no need to put more toxic gunk into a child's delicate immune system with yet more vaccinations. http://www.beinghealthynaturally.com/naturalcures/tbtuberculosis.php

24 Nov 2011 05:09a.m.

Susan Kuchinskas wrote:

This is fascinating, but I don't see the application for resource-poor countries. First, you would have to train bees individually -- and they only live for 28 days. Second, in order to keep them alive for that long a time, you would have to house and feed them. You would either have to keep training bees in situ or else keep getting them shipped. I think Amanda is right, it makes more sense to work on cheaper tests and immunizations. It's a cool project, though.

27 Oct 2011 08:24p.m.

Evan Lukes wrote:

So, let's do this with dogs. Every time there's an earthquake give them a treat. Animals are meant to be able to sense a pending earthquake; so a dog should show a form of anticipation for a treat before an earthquake if trained in the same way.

27 Oct 2011 06:25p.m.

Amanda wrote:

Bees sniffing out tuberculosis? Why don't we just start immunising our kids against this disease? The only reason New Zealand has the highest rate of tuberculosis in the developed world is because we let refugees in to this country who have the disease and then New Zealanders are at risk of picking up the disease because we no longer immunise against it. When I spoke to my doctor about immunisation he recommends that I should have my children immunised as at the time I was working in a pharmacy where we had a contract with the TB society and were regularly in contact with TB patients. I would have thought that training bees to sniff out TB would be harmful to their wellbeing as bees are at high risk at the moment of dying out. I would be interested to see how Asure Quality react to the idea of sniffer bees. I'm a beekeeper and find the idea quite fascinating. I definitely think that it would be a bad idea in terms of bee health and numbers but who knows I could be quite wrong. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Thank you for your time Amanda Nicholson