Health Wanted: The Black Death

The Episode

Put on your favorite medieval tavern playlist, check yourself for signs of pestilence, and bring out your dead. This week on Health Wanted, we’re rounding out our month of Halloween horrors by talking about the original plague: the black death. We’ll also be talking with medical entomologist Adelaide Miarinjara, PhD, about battling plague in Madagascar.

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The Listener Questions

Do we need to worry about Chikungunya in the U.S.?

Not yet! New York state reported a locally acquired case of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that is similar to Dengue fever, at the beginning of August. The person who got sick did not report any recent travel, so that means they must have gotten infected by a mosquito in New York. It’s the first case of someone getting the virus in the United States in six years.

The health department said they have not detected chikungunya in any of the mosquito populations they’ve tested. So the person likely got it either from a mosquito who happened to have bitten someone who did travel recently and got infected with chikungunya abroad, or they were bitten by a mosquito that got off a plane that was coming from a country where the virus is endemic.

We’ve had some sporadic cases in the past, but thankfully none have ever caught on..so far.

Chikungunya isn’t usually fatal, but it’s not fun. It can cause fever and joint pain like dengue does.

There are two kinds of mosquito that carry chikungunya, one does not live that far north and one has expanded its territory up there. However, mosquitos like it to be warm. As we head into fall and the temperature drop, the mosquito population will go down, even further reducing the risk of mosquito-borne illness generally.

Do the health and sustainability benefits of plant-based and organic products, like protein powder, might outweigh the risks of contamination with lead and other things?

Consumer Reports tested a variety of protein powders for lead and other heavy metals. What they found was that a lot of the products (predominantly the vegan ones) far exceeded their threshold for acceptable levels of lead, which sounds very scary but probably actually isn’t that dire. 

To explain why, the first thing I need you to understand is California’s Prop 65. You may have seen this warning before: "California Prop 65 Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm." California picked an acceptable level for exposure to these chemicals that is 1,000 times lower than the level that has been shown to demonstrate harm. 

They wanted to make sure there was a big margin of error that meant you could be exposed without issue. This is the level of lead exposure that Consumer Reports used at their threshold of acceptability, not the federal level or the level where harm might actually occur.  So even if the levels of lead in the protein powders are higher than that threshold, even if they are 1,200% higher, that’s still less than the federally recommended limit and the dose that could cause harm.

Of course, the problem is that your protein powder is likely not the only lead exposure you have, so depending on your diet, you might start getting close. 

Vegan protein powder options had the highest levels of lead in them, which I think is something people will find interesting. Hydroxide.Foodscience is a food science communicator on social media and she brought up the great point that this is a good opportunity to remind people that just because something positions itself as “healthy” or “clean,” you shouldn’t take that at face value, and you should look for supplements that are tested by an independent third party and transparent about the results.

So-called “dangerous” levels of lead will continue to be an issue so long as we continue to accumulate heavy metals in the environment from industrialization and pollution.

How would the ethics of a full-body transplant be any different than regular organ donation? Why wouldn’t we want to be able to give people a longer life, even if they are paralyzed?

Of course someone who is disabled is not less worthy of a transplant that could extend their life. The bigger issue is that one organ donor can save the lives of up to eight people with their two lungs, two kidneys, one heart, one liver, one pancreas, and intestines. They can improve the lives of over 75 people with skin grafts, tendon donation, bones, veins and heart valves.

So the question then becomes “what is the justification to save one person when you could save or help multiple people?”

There’s also questions about what having your head on a different body would do to your mental health. And it would come at an insane cost as well. It's hard to justify that use of resources.

Transplant science, in general, evokes some serious ethical questions. When there is a much larger group of people who need donated organs compared to the number of proper donors, you have a situation of allocation that can get murky.

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
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