{"id":635,"date":"2019-01-19T11:12:43","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T15:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/?p=635"},"modified":"2019-01-19T11:12:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T15:12:43","slug":"safe-to-swim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/?p=635","title":{"rendered":"Safe to Swim?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How blissfully we would jump into ponds and lakes as kids and swim, splash, swallow, and blow out water that got into our noses.  I remember one particular pond where friends and I swam that had mud so mushy and deep on the bottom that we had no idea what forms of life we were stirring up.  Now researchers&#8217; progress treating an infection caused by an amoeba lurking in such waters &#8212; unbeknownst to us &#8212; makes me shudder.  According to the <em>New York<\/em> Times Science section, brain-eating amoebas &#8212; called <em>Naegleria fowleri <\/em>&#8212; live in &#8220;freshwater ponds in much of the United States.&#8221;  It&#8217;s an &#8220;exceptionally lethal microbe that invades through the sinuses and feeds on human brain tissue.&#8221;  Infections are rare (143 known U.S. victims since 1962) but almost always deadly; only four victims have survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The drug research looks promising, but maybe we should sit on the sofa and play electronic games for now?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How blissfully we would jump into ponds and lakes as kids and swim, splash, swallow, and blow out water that got into our noses. I remember one particular pond where friends and I swam that had mud so mushy and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/?p=635\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}