Great clip - I love this bleeding heart shit, too! Thought she was brilliant in Young Frankenstein. On MS, my understanding is that incidence varies widely by state or at least geography, with a lot of cases, for example, in the northern Midwest. I think I read once there aren't many cases down South. I knew several people who had MS when I lived in MI, and virtually no one from anywhere else (I've also lived in the Northeast). Anecdotal, of course, but it was striking to me.
While the etiology of MS is not well understood (heck, or understood at all), I think it's generally seen as an autoimmune disease, and probably has a genetic component.
I'm going to guess the northern Midwest connection has something to do with the northern European connection, and probably why most of the research I kept finding while I was trying to get stats came from the western Canadian areas like Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
Most of the people I know personally with MS came from the South... but that's because -I'm- originally from the South. Their ethnic background is white, but that could mean all sorts of things now. In North Carolina specifically, in the Research Triangle Park area, a lot of Yankees from elsewhere are coming in, so instead of the people of primarily English/Scots-Irish background, you are getting the People of Scandinavia and other ethnic backgrounds, which may be MS-related. It would be interesting to look at.
I have read that incidence of MS depends on the latitude where a person grows up. The inference is that vitamin D is a protective factor and people get less of it the further north they are in their formative years.
Great clip - I love this bleeding heart shit, too! Thought she was brilliant in Young Frankenstein. On MS, my understanding is that incidence varies widely by state or at least geography, with a lot of cases, for example, in the northern Midwest. I think I read once there aren't many cases down South. I knew several people who had MS when I lived in MI, and virtually no one from anywhere else (I've also lived in the Northeast). Anecdotal, of course, but it was striking to me.
While the etiology of MS is not well understood (heck, or understood at all), I think it's generally seen as an autoimmune disease, and probably has a genetic component.
I'm going to guess the northern Midwest connection has something to do with the northern European connection, and probably why most of the research I kept finding while I was trying to get stats came from the western Canadian areas like Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
Most of the people I know personally with MS came from the South... but that's because -I'm- originally from the South. Their ethnic background is white, but that could mean all sorts of things now. In North Carolina specifically, in the Research Triangle Park area, a lot of Yankees from elsewhere are coming in, so instead of the people of primarily English/Scots-Irish background, you are getting the People of Scandinavia and other ethnic backgrounds, which may be MS-related. It would be interesting to look at.
I have read that incidence of MS depends on the latitude where a person grows up. The inference is that vitamin D is a protective factor and people get less of it the further north they are in their formative years.