Self Cleaning Mouse 204
mikesd81 writes "LEWIS Wire is reporting on a self-cleaning mouse that disables the survival of bacteria with an auto-disinfecting surface. From the article: 'According to a recent survey from the University of Arizona, the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat. Despite this, office workers rarely have time to clean their desktops frequently or thoroughly enough to be effective. As a result, the presence of microbes contributes to the spread of pneumonia, the flu, pink eye and strep throat, among other extremely contagious viruses.'"
Oh no! "bacteria"! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you "disinfect" a surface, it's like clear-cutting a rain-forest. You've upset the balance, making a fresh new playground where the really baad and hardy weeds might take hold.
Special coating??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Useless (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, using such surfaces in hospital for example on doorknobs or armrests may really be helpfull.
Germs are good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whats wrong with hygiene? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh no! "bacteria"! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's even more bacteria INSIDE YOU! And no, they're not only "your" bacteria. They are in fact bacteria that you ate, breathed in and so on and so on. They live and breed inside you, and defecate inside you! They also *eat* from whatever is laying around (i.e. YOU).
Shocking? Well it better not be, since they're not going away any time soon. I'm sick of gem-counting revelations and toilet seat comparisons.
I'm proud to say I use a regular dirty mouse and keyboard and I'm still alive and healthy. If someone is concerned he might catch something bad from a computer mouse, he wouldn't be alive to buy this product anyway.
bacteria or virus? (Score:5, Insightful)
If contamination were a problem, we would be dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, desinfecting too much actually leads to other problems. Current studies suggest that too much hygiene may be a big factor in the recent increases of allergies. Also, fighting too aggressively against any kind of etiologic agents only produces more resistant etiologic agents. A prominent example is the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a Staph.A. strain that developed antibiotic resistance and is responsible for a good share of all nosocomial infections (i.e. infections you get that you get in hospital but are otherwise unrelated to your actual treatment there).
IANAMD (I am not an MD), but I have an education as combat medic in the Austrian Army where infectiology is a huge subject during education.
Re:Oh no! "bacteria"! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, these "studies" are usually trying to convince us to buy an anti-bacterial soap, or as in this case a self cleaning mouse so they play on people's fears and doubts to make them want to buy it, ie... it's just FUD.
Re:Oh no! "bacteria"! (Score:5, Insightful)
And of the other 3%, most of them we couldn't survive without and the primary way they can harm us is by dying. The human lifeform is symbiotic with a whole bunch of bacterial species, which do everything from cleaning your eyeballs to assisting with digestion. The biosphere relies on bacteria to maintain everything from soil conditions to oxygen levels in the atmosphere.
Killing bacteria to stop infections is like chopping off people's hands to stop shootings - before they happen.
Personal items don't make sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, if you touch the phone to your face, and then wait a while and touch it to your face again, you didn't accomplish anything. The bacteria that were on your face are still on your face; even if you hadn't used the phone they just would have stayed there.
Now, if you had a phone that was shared by large numbers of people, there might be a reason to disinfect it so you didn't spread things, but even then I'm not sure how dirty your face is. Your hands are probably much worse, and people still seem to shake hands without hesitation. Regular handwashing would probably be more effective at preventing the spread of disease than whether your mobile phone is oozing Lysol.
The objects which it makes sense to make self-disinfecting are those which are used by large numbers of people, and are principally touched with their hands. The keyboards and mice of public terminals strike me as a good use, but more than that, I'd like to see the interior door-handles of public restrooms made self-disinfecting. (Or mandate that all restroom doors have to be free-swinging and open outwards, so you could just push them.)
Re:Oh no! "bacteria"! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh no! "bacteria"! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wrist bacteria vs. Butt bacteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure there is. That is, unless you never wipe your ass, which is not very probable even on Slashdot.
Then again, I don't worry about my desk. How is my immune system supposed to work if it never gets anything for training? There is a good reason why allergies spread like an epidemic nowadays. Ask old people whether they knew anyone who was allergic, say, 40 years ago.