What’s Lurking Under Your Fingernails?
In the spring of 1997, I spent a wonderful day with Dr Omar Amin in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr Amin is one of the most respected and sought-after parasitologists in the world and runs the Parasitology Center Inc in Scottsdale, Arizona.
He gave me a copy of his paper 'Understanding Parasites' in which there was a sentence that has always stuck in my mind: "A recent inspection of an expensive restaurant in Los Angeles showed that 100% of all employees (not just servers) had fecal matter under their nails".
Fecal matter and disease (particularly parasites) generally go together. With our cities offering cuisine from increasingly exotic regions of the world, this carries a higher incidence of parasite-borne diseases, especially if these regional foods are undercooked or even raw: Dutch herring,...