anit-bacterial soap is bad

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The more I pay attention to a variety of topics, the more it seems to me that balance is everything.  Essentially nothing is all good, or all bad.  Too much salt is bad for us, but we must have some salt in order to live.  Too little calcium is bad for us, but I believe they are finding out that too much is also bad.  Etc., etc., etc.

I am reading more and more often that "they" are finding out that being too clean is bad for people and for the environment.  Here is an interesting article from Smithsonian magazine.......

The mother of one of my daughter's high-school friends is a microbiologist.  One of her interests is examining the ecosystems found on human beings.  We, of course, evolved in an environment full of bacteria, viruses, and other forms of microscopic life.  While some of these were, and are, harmful, many others are helpful to us.  (Think of yogurt -- it is full of friendly bacteria!)  Her concern was that people were killing off all of the microcrobes on our bodies, before we even knew what had been there.  Before we knew who was helpful for what reasons...........

Just as we have diminished the diversity of life everywhere on the planet, we are doing it on/in our own personal private ecosystems, and we have no idea what we may have messed up in the process.............

Our arrogant willingness -- no, EAGERNESS -- to make changes to things we don't begin to understand is frightening and frustrating.

There are so many examples of the way this tendency has gone wrong.........  I wish we could learn to be a LOT more careful about making changes from which we cannot retreat!  (I am thinking about genetic modification of plants, but I'm sure there are many other examples.............)

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