thank you so much, Helminthic Therapy that is really interesting, have you noticed any improvements?
I confess that was my idea too: chip in with a few people and share the worms around.
Surely it can't be too hard, we can read on wikipedia how to do it. Jasper won't lose too much as people will still be buying from him to seed their areas.
wikipedia says trichuriasis is spread by flies and cockroaches spreading the eggs in places like ethiopia. Maybe we just have to eat a bit of the infected dirt?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichuriasis
It says female worms release 3000 to 20,000 eggs per day. You poo those out and put them in the dirt. The dirt must be kept warm and moist. Tropical even. For at least 10 days but better up to 30 days.
Then "infective eggs are ingested by way of soil-contaminated hands or food and hatch inside"
they live for 1 year.
So what we need to do is get a tray of soil, keep it warm, bury poo beneath it. rub our hands on the surface after 30 days then roll some
cookie dough over our hands and eat it raw.
I reckon that would do it. Hopefully we wouldn't get salmonella etc...
But as seconder says, jasper sells human whipworms not pig whipworms.
But wikipedia says Dr Weinstock used pig whipworms
So maybe we can try to propagate the pig whipworms instead?
I found this from the British Medical Journal - a 1971 article on experimental pig whipworm infestation of a man. This is how they got the eggs:
"The eggs used were harvested from
the faeces of three naturally infected sixmonth-
old farm pigs and were cultured to
the infective stage in moist vermiculite at
26 C for 34 days. Concurrently, four pigs,
aged 9 weeks, were infected successfully
with eggs from this same harvesting and
culture; 30,000 eggs were given in a single
dose by mouth and maturation of the parasites
occurred between 41 and 49 days."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1795911/pdf/brmedj02254-0056a.pdf
So we need a microscope and a pig. Vermiculite and a warm
location.
Here is a new page I found with details of providers of helminthic therapies listed including Ovamed that provides Pig Whipworm eggs.
http://www.helminthictherapy.com/Providers.html
It says you can buy Pig Whipworm eggs from Ovamed subsidiary Biomonde in Thailand. 300 eggs costs 80 euros. Basic dose is 2500 eggs for 300 euros which you need every 2 weeks.
If jasper was expensive, this is worse! But we could get the smallest dose, a pig, a microscope, vermiculite and a warm
location and voila: DIY worms
here are two more articles on the pig whipworm from 2004 when they were going to produce them commercially: (note, in the bbc article, BioCure is also Ovamed)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3604189.stm
http://www.health24.com/news/Gastrointestinal/1-914,30341.asp