Prof Standford believes that it is not just that we separate ourselves from the environment by washing off the environment or by being careful not to touch dirty things, it is basically the way in which we no longer contact the general outside environment at all. Children today watch television a lot of the time and play with computers a lot of the time. There are many pressures which prevent children from being able to go out and play outside as they used to be able to do.

Prof Standford's research over the last twenty years, was started off aimed at treating tuboculosis, preventing TB, improving the treatment of leprosy, preventing the children of leprosy patients developing the disease as they grew older. However, he says that the way in which it has progressed as been quite surprising:

"As we were beginning to understand the immune changes that we were capable of inducing, the scale and the scheme for this was very much greater. Today we’re very much interested in the prevention and potential treatment of cancers and in the prevention of allergic diseases. My current dream is that we can develop a vaccine which will replace the effects of too much hygiene and keeping ourselves too far away from the environment.

Yes, there are germs that are bad for you but the great majority of them are not bad for you at all, others that are neutral and others are definitely there and benefit you. This may seem like heretical to many people but if you work in this field it is not heretical at all, it’s what we’ve all come to learn to believe."

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