Tag: parasites

Is climate change REALLY making people allergic to meat?

Ticks responsible for giving people a “meat allergy” are spreading further and wider because the planet is warming.

That’s the story, anyway.

The disease is called Alpha-Gal Syndrome, it is a condition where your body produces an immune response to galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, a carbohydrate found in mammalian meat.

It was first noted in the mid-2000s, when cancer patients began to display symptoms of anaphylaxis after being treated with the monoclonal antibody drug Cetuximab.

Then, in the early 2010s, researchers found a correlation between increased alpha-gal antibody reaction and repeated tick bites.

Since then, the prevalence of alpha-gal has been increasing year-on-year, with the CDC now estimating almost 500,000 people suffer from this “meat allergy” in the US alone.

Why are these numbers increasing?

Because of climate change, apparently. You see, the warmer weather is causing the tick population to increase, so more people are being bitten, so more people become allergic to meat.

It’s all very…neat, don’t you think?

Myths built upon convenient myths, each reinforcing the other. Just as people “should” be eating less meat to (allegedly) help fight climate change, a disease emerges that forces people to eat less meat…because of climate change.

The reality – if we can even call it that – is that alpha gal is a “confounding condition”, that’s what this Guardian article calls it anyway…

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First Human Case Of Flesh-Eating Screwworm Detected In Sanctuary State Of Maryland 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm in Maryland after a “patient” returned from El Salvador, according to Reuters, citing HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon. Details about the patient’s immigration status were not released, though it’s worth noting that Maryland is a far-left Democratic Party stronghold and a sanctuary state.

Screwworms have been moving north from Central America through Mexico since 2023, with a new case identified in July about 400 miles south of the U.S. border in Veracruz. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) response was to shut down cross-border activity of cattle ports of entry into the U.S. to mitigate the biosecurity threat.  

More details from the Reuters report:

  • HHS reported the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the parasite on August 4 in a patient returning from El Salvador.
  • Industry sources earlier told Reuters the patient had traveled from Guatemala, and Beef Alliance emails circulated this version to livestock stakeholders. HHS did not clarify the discrepancy.
  • HHS says the risk to U.S. public health is very low. No U.S. animal cases have been reported this year.

For humans, screwworm infestations are survivable with treatment, but this is the first U.S. case that has sent alarm bells across public health officials and the cattle industry. Left untreated, these parasites can kill hosts, such as cattle, wildlife, and pets. 

Here is USDA’s response so far:

  • Sterile fly facility: USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins recently announced plans for a new sterile fly facility in Texas (Moore Air Force Base), modeled on past eradication campaigns. The facility will take 2–3 years to build.
  • Mexico is also building a $51 million sterile fly plant in the south. Currently, only one plant exists (Panama City), producing 100 million sterile flies weekly – but 500 million are needed to push infestations back to the Darien Gap.

USDA estimates that a Texas screwworm outbreak could devastate the cattle industry, inflicting $1.8 billion in losses from livestock deaths, labor, and treatment costs. The biothreat comes at a time when the nation’s cattle herd is the smallest in 70 years, beef prices are at record highs, and feedlot margins remain extremely tight.

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Eco Loons Suggest Proliferating A Plague Of Ticks To Prevent People Eating Meat

Perhaps it’s a drinking or smoking game at Western Michigan University. Try to come up with the most farcical, April Fool-style Net Zero nonsense and see if we can get it published.

How about writing a paper titled ‘Beneficial Bloodsucking’ that states it is “morally obligatory” to promote a plague of the lone star tick whose bite can lead to medical problems including an allergy to red meat. Oh, and it could kill you, but more about that later. Promoting these ghastly ticks, which are already increasing in numbers in large areas of the United States, is said to: “prevent the world from becoming a significantly worse place… doesn’t violate anyone’s rights… promotes virtuous action or character”.

How stupid can academics be? These clowns are prepared to unleash a proliferation of ticks on the general population because one side effect of a bite happens to induce an allergy to red meat, notably beef, pork and lamb. What is proposed is a deliberate tick injection of the sugar molecule alpha-gal into human tissue, leading to an immune defence response causing a syndrome known as AGS. This leads to potentially fatal allergic reactions to red meat and many associated products including dairy products such as milk, cheese, yoghurt and butter. Gelatine is also a problem, so no treats for children since it is found in many favourite brands of candy. It is not just mammalian products that cause problems. Alpha-gal-like structures have been found in carrageenan, a seaweed-derived thickener used in some processed food, and in a number of medicines.

It is feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks, state the authors.

“If we are right, then today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tickborne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation,” they add.

Tickborne AGS is said by these maniacs to be a “moral bioenhancer”.

So who are these temple-of-learning thickos, these climate-bothering cretins who are promoting a widespread Net Zero fantasy to abolish the eating of meat?

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US Orders “Immediate Shutdown” Of Mexican Cattle Trade After Cross-Border Parasitic Fly Threat

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has ordered the immediate suspension of all live cattle, bison, and horse imports from Mexico via the southern border. The move comes in response to a newly confirmed case of New World Screwworm in Mexico—a highly destructive parasite that poses a massive threat to U.S. livestock and the broader food supply chain.

“I have ordered an immediate shutdown of live cattle, bison, and horse trade through the southern U.S.–Mexico border,” Rollins wrote on X, adding, “This decisive action comes after Mexico confirmed another case of New World Screwworm in Veracruz. As promised, @USDA remains vigilant to ensure the protection of America’s livestock and food supply.” 

She quoted a U.S. Department of Agriculture press release that announced the trade suspension, which signals heightened biosecurity concerns within the USDA and reflects a zero-tolerance posture toward potential cross-border parasitic threats.

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Cancer Patients Recover By Taking Repurposed Anti-Parasitic Drugs

Joe Tippens never planned to discover a potential remedy that he credits with saving his life and thrust him into the spotlight among notable cancer survivors. The 67-year-old businessman told The Epoch Times he just wanted to beat a type of cancer with an extremely low survival rate.

In August 2016, Tippens was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer with a fist-sized tumor. After undergoing chemotherapy and radiation five times a week in Houston, the large tumor in his left lung was eliminated. However, Tippens said the treatments came closer to killing him than curing him.

When he returned home to Oklahoma after the New Year, he received devastating news. His oncologist told him he had zero chance of surviving for more than a few months.

“In January of 2017, my PET scan lit up like a Christmas tree and I had wide metastasis everywhere, including in my neck, bones, pancreas, and liver,” Tippens said.

Finding a Lifeline

Facing a prognosis of three months to live, Tippens heard an intriguing story from a veterinarian he knew: A scientist with terminal cancer reportedly cured her lab mice and then herself using fenbendazole, an antiparasitic drug.

The story was the beginning of what eventually became the “Joe Tippens Protocol.”

Fenbendazole, used for 30 years to treat intestinal parasites in animals, has not received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for human use, meaning doctors cannot prescribe it for people. However, with a terminal diagnosis and nothing to lose, Tippens decided to try it alongside his conventional treatments.

Tippens found that Panacur, a trade name for fenbendazole, was sold over the counter at outlets that carry veterinary medications.

Starting in the third week of January 2017, Tippens began taking the canine medication, Panacur, 1 gram per day for three consecutive days per week. After four days without the medication, which contains about 222 milligrams of fenbendazole per gram, he would repeat his three-day routine. Three months later, Tippens was cancer-free.

His protocol also included Theracurmin, a form of the active compound in turmeric, and CBD, an extract of cannabis which does not cause intoxication.

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USDA set to reopen Mexican beef imports despite concerns over flesh-eating screwworm infestation

Starting Monday, the United States will begin gradually reopening cattle imports from Mexico after a two-month suspension due to concerns over the spread of the screwworm, a dangerous livestock parasite.

Screwworms are parasitic larvae of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly. Female flies lay their eggs in wounds or mucous membranes of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and those larvae then burrow into the animal. The larvae use tiny hooks in their mouths to eat the flesh of their victim and if that infestation is left untreated, an adult cow can die from it in just a few weeks.

Concerns were raised about the flies in 2024 after an outbreak was discovered in southern Mexico. Imports were restricted in November, then lifted in February before the screwworm made “unacceptable northward advancement” and the ban was implemented in May. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said at the time, “The protection of our animals and safety of our nation’s food supply is a national security issue of the utmost importance.”

The USDA announced that the first port to resume operations will be in Douglas, Arizona. The agency said this location poses the lowest risk due to its geographic position and its “long history of effective collaboration” with officials in Sonora, Mexico.

To support containment efforts, the USDA announced last month it would open a new sterile fly dispersal facility in Texas and invest $21 million to update a similar plant in Mexico. That facility will distribute sterile flies that are grown in Panama. No sterile fly factory exists right now in the United States.

Secretary Rollins confirmed the phased plan in a public statement, highlighting efforts by the Trump administration to contain the pest.

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US To Open Fly Production Facility For Combating Mexican New World Screwworms

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins launched a facility in South Texas on Wednesday that will release millions of sterile flies to fight the threat of flesh-eating parasites that are infecting cattle in Mexico and could reach the U.S. border soon, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a June 18 statement.

The parasite, New World screwworm (NWS), is a “devastating pest that causes serious and often deadly damage to livestock, wildlife, pets, and in rare cases, humans,” the USDA said. Some U.S. agriculture and cattle industry officials are worried that if the migration isn’t checked, the NWS flies could reach the border by the end of summer.

According to the agency, NWS females lay eggs on wounds or orifices of warm-blooded animals. Once the eggs hatch into larvae, they burrow into the wound and feed off the flesh. As more maggots hatch and feed, the wound becomes deeper and larger. Eventually, it becomes so severe that the host animal dies.

A single female NWS fly can lay up to 3,000 eggs over its lifespan. As such, a large infestation poses considerable risks to farmers raising cows, sheep, and other animals.

In the 1950s, a strategy called sterile insect technique (SIT) was developed, which was used to eradicate NWS from the United States, Mexico, and Central America, the USDA said in an April 2025 document. SIT used gamma radiation to turn NWS pupae into sterile male flies.

When the male flies are released en masse, they mate with wild female flies who end up laying unfertilized eggs, eventually leading to the eradication of these pests.

“While NWS has been eradicated from the United States for decades, recent detections in Mexico as far north as Oaxaca and Veracruz, about 700 miles away from the U.S. border, led to the immediate suspension of live cattle, horse, and bison imports through U.S. ports of entry along the southern border on May 11, 2025,” said the USDA statement.

The facility launched by the agriculture secretary is an $8.5 million sterile NWS fly dispersal site located at Moore Air Base in South Texas.

The United States currently can procure 100 million flies per week from a sterile fly production facility in Panama. The USDA has invested $21 million in a production facility in Mexico that, when operational, will provide another 60-100 million flies weekly. Combined, at least 160 million flies per week are expected to be available for disbursal through the Moore Air Base facility.

In addition, the USDA is also looking at installing a sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Base to complement the new dispersal facility.

“The United States has defeated NWS before, and we will do it again,” said Rollins. “We do not take lightly the threat NWS poses to our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain.

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TERRIFYING: Dangerous Parasite That Eats Animals and Humans Alive Rapidly Marches Toward America With Help from the Mexican Drug Cartels

A dangerous flesh-eating parasite is rapidly marching toward the United States despite several desperate efforts to halt its advance. And one can thank the Mexican drug cartels for this.

As The Atlantic notes, the United States has been fighting an aerial war against the New World screwworm for 70 years. This parasite eats animals alive, including cows, pigs, deer, dogs, and even humans.

The larvae of the parasitic fly harboring the worm rip through flesh and transform small pricks into huge, revolting wounds. Worse, they produce foul-smelling odors resembling sewer gas.

It’s no wonder the worm’s scientific name, C. hominivorax, translates to “man-eater.”

In the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched an all-out assault to eradicate the screwworm.

Here is how they did it, according to The Atlantic.

Workers raised screwworms in factories, blasted them with radiation until they were sterile, and dropped the sterile adult screwworms by the millions—even hundreds of millions—weekly over the U.S., then farther south in Mexico, and eventually in the rest of North America.

The worm was eradicated from North America and Central America in the 20th century, but things have turned dark.

The outbreak began in Panama, skyrocketing from dozens a year to 1,000, despite ongoing drops of sterile flies. According to the Atlantic, the parasite then began moving northward, at first slowly and then rapidly, by 2024.

As of this month, the parasite has advanced 1,600 miles through eight countries to reach the Mexican States of Oaxaca and Veracruz, just 700 miles away from the Texas border.

According to Mark Eisele, a Cheyenne-based rancher and former president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the advance of screwworms is partly due to the Mexican drug cartels.

“All we needed to do was keep a flow of those planes. But the cartels were extorting money for every flight of flies that came out of Panama. They were extorting $35,000 a plane,” he said. “So, for all practical purposes, this is really kind of a political closing to make a point that they have got to get their act together.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has responded by indefinitely shutting down animal imports from or transferring through Mexico.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins released a statement on the invasion last week.

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Refusal To Help Stop Flesh-Eating Screwworms Is More Evidence Mexico Is No Friend To America

The United States recently suspended imports of cattle, horses, and bison from Mexico in response to a growing threat: the return of a silent, flesh-eating invader called the New World Screwworm. The screwworm is more than just a bug. It’s a flesh-eating parasite that poses a severe risk to livestock and wildlife and is crawling its way north from Mexico.

If left unchecked, the screwworm could decimate American cattle, horses, and wildlife. And once it’s here, eradicating it could take decades and cost billions. The last time it happened, our livestock industry took 30 years to bounce back.

While Mexico cries foul, it’s time we stop pretending we’re dealing with a friendly, cooperative neighbor. We’re not.

Thankfully, the U.S. is not taking any chances and has responded swiftly and decisively. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins deserves enormous credit for jumping into action. The USDA quickly mobilized, ramping up strategies to stop the outbreak at its source and suspending live animal imports through ports of entry along the southern border on May 11. 

The methods being used are the same ones that successfully eradicated screwworm from the U.S. in 1966: releasing massive numbers of sterile male screwworm flies. A female screwworm fly lives only 30 days, maximum. Since she gets just one chance to mate in this short window, mating with a sterile male means her line ends there. No offspring means no spread. Since each female can lay up to 3,000 flesh-eating larvae, breaking that reproductive cycle is the key to stopping the outbreak.

But for that to work, flights to disperse sterile male flies need to be constant and daily. Mexico knows this but still imposed restrictions, limiting USDA sterile fly dispersal flights and imposing customs duties on the tools needed for the job, such as plane parts, fly shipments, and dispersal equipment, delaying every aspect of the operation. Let that sink in: As a deadly parasite inches toward our border, the Mexican government is nickel-and-diming the planes and tools we’re using to stop it. That’s not cooperation. That’s sabotage.

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Engineering Toxoplasma gondii secretion systems for intracellular delivery of multiple large therapeutic proteins to neurons

Delivering macromolecules across biological barriers such as the blood–brain barrier limits their application in vivo. Previous work has demonstrated that Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that naturally travels from the human gut to the central nervous system (CNS), can deliver proteins to host cells. Here we engineered T. gondii’s endogenous secretion systems, the rhoptries and dense granules, to deliver multiple large (>100 kDa) therapeutic proteins into neurons via translational fusions to toxofilin and GRA16. We demonstrate delivery in cultured cells, brain organoids and in vivo, and probe protein activity using imaging, pull-down assays, scRNA-seq and fluorescent reporters. We demonstrate robust delivery after intraperitoneal administration in mice and characterize 3D distribution throughout the brain. As proof of concept, we demonstrate GRA16-mediated brain delivery of the MeCP2 protein, a putative therapeutic target for Rett syndrome. By characterizing the potential and current limitations of the system, we aim to guide future improvements that will be required for broader application.

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