Talking dirty [Salon]: “Could it be that our laudable cleanliness has something to do

with the increase in immune disorders? Epidemiologists,

immunologists, bacteriologists and parasitologists from

England to Iowa think this may be the case. According to

what’s called the “hygiene hypothesis,” our immune systems,

which evolved in environments where we couldn’t escape

disease, microorganisms of every description and just plain

dirt, don’t always develop normally if they don’t meet these

things during our childhood development.” Recently, I noticed restauranteur Terence Conran saying the same thing about the public health regulations for eating establishments.