Very true, the number of species of bacteria in the body is absolutely gigantic and we know that there's massive interaction between them and human cells, especially the brain. Yes, they get food when we eat, but there's no particular reason why their benefits should be limited to that, particularly as human cells contain a large amount of DNA from other sources (particularly viruses, but possibly bacteria with DNA transfer ability as well).

We have only a limited understanding of what the external-origin DNA does, as we now understand that the "junk DNA" is actually metadata used by encoding DNA to decide what works and how. There is no reason to suppose every protein human cells synthesise is for human use, and no reason to suppose the symbiotic relationship is a shallow one.

It depends on how the tail is obtained.

We know bacteria can steal DNA from other bacteria, viruses, and even infected hosts, it's how we developed CRISPR. It's what CRISPR is. If superbugs are using this trick to get the tails, then there may be novel gene splicing processes that would be of interest.

It also depends on whether we can target the tail.

If it's stolen DNA, does this mean all superbugs (regardless of type) steal the same DNA? If so, is there a way to target that specifically and thus attack all superbugs?

We could test whether the argument presented makes sense, but only if the quantum uncertainty principle is actually what I was taught (teachers aren't necessarily reliable).

What I was taught was that uncertainty in position times uncertainty in velocity cannot ever fall below Planck's constant.

If quantum particles can move freely in spacetime, then uncertainty in position is uncertainty in position in spacetime, not merely uncertainty in space. Which means the limits on precision in space alone can't ever be as tight as that. It also means, though, that you should be able to predict how this would impact interference pattern experiments, and then see if the prediction matches observation.

At classical scales of matter over classical scales of time, you are correct. However, that's also utterly irrelevant at the quantum scale.

Quantum clocks should have an accuracy sufficient to measure anything you could observe in an experiment.

I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed effects before causes, even in classical physics, provided that is from an external frame of reference. So long as the particle experiences cause and then effect, there shouldn't be any problem.

Artificial wombs seem more sensible, c-sections can cause scarring and present risks for any future pregnancy. C-sections also limit exposure of the skin to the mother's microbiome, although the effects of that aren't clear to me.

With artificial wombs, there's obviously no scarring and you can control all the parameters as you like.

There's also evidence that, during the last trimester, the foetus' brain is influenced by sounds outside the womb and that this impacts the sounds the person can generate later in life. This would be enormously useful.

Although there's a fair bit of doubt about modern human brains shrinking during the Neolithic, if they did, it would almost certainly have been because survival rates were higher. Again, with an artificial womb, this limit wouldn't apply. So, if such shrinkage happened, it could be reversed.

So, artificial wombs would seem to be the logical way for IVF to go.

User: jd
Estimated age: 297i + 597j + 127k
Conclusion: User is extremely imaginary and possibly a Time Lord.

That would require work, which they're vigorously opposed to. Much easier to just have their preferred news outlets SAY the tide didn't come in.

Agreed. It would be better to reduce the number of taxes and increase those left to cover the actual costs of British services. You then cut the costs of monitoring and collecting.

However, if this was done, the BBC Charter would need protecting in law to prevent what the Tories did, which was to renege on the charter and redo it to benefit them. The charter should not be for the government to rewrite at will, it should be a contract that neither side can legally violate or ignore.

Whilst I do prefer precise labelling, I can understand functional labelling and treatment-based classification.

If you think about it in geographical terms, you wouldn't (usually) identify a country as a subunit of the continent it is on, but may well identify a city by its State or country, even when it's not ambiguous, although not always. So there's a history of using a range of labelling techniques, humans aren't consistent.

Of course, we also differentiate between benign tumours and aggressive tumours, so there's no real reason why you can't have a third class. Maybe call them COBOL tumours - they're not dangerous to keep but you might want to get rid of them at some point.

However, we live in an age of gene therapy and immunotherapy. Aggressive treatments are not necessarily where the future lies. If, in ten year's time, the biopsy for identifying the prostate cancer results in you being given some jabs three weeks later that clears the whole thing up, there's no need to fret about people being stupid right now. It's not a problem that'll remain with us for any meaningful length of time.

I've been provisionally diagnosed with ADHD. It's provisional because although I have severe symptoms and they massively impact work and private life, the experts don't consider it severe enough and repeatedly reject referrals.

It's unclear if a diagnosis would help, there's a world shortage of ADHD medication and there's far too little research on what is clearly (to anyone who bothers to look) a range of unrelated conditions that share the ADHD label and a bunch of the outward symptoms.

Psychiatric medication is not prescribed on any sane or rational basis, they hand it out and see if things improve or your brain/body starts to die. Been through this with the bipolar.

Nobody actually looks to see what is actually going wrong or where, with the result that there's no cumulative understanding of what to use or when, with the result that doctors don't want to look to see what's going on.

I've done all I can on that front, I've personally paid for whole genome sequencing and authorised the lab to provide that data to scientists, but I can't fight this level of stupidity singlehanded. Doctors are just going to have to learn on their own that you treat mechanisms, not symptoms, and therefore must know what mechanisms apply before deciding on treatment.