Sigh - I spent over 2 hours talking with this reporter trying to help her understand the limitations of this guy's studies, but she doesn't seem to have taken on board anything I said... Of course, he could be right and it could also be that the X-rays emanating from a TV really do protect you from malaria. Or it could be that you watch TV indoors and so don't get as many mosquito bites. So, yes, it could be that Toxo causes increased risk-taking ... OR it could be that risk-takers drive their cars more crazily and do things that cause them to be slightly more likely to get infected! There can also be a strong socio-economic bias to infection rates and it could be that people from Czech farms are more likely to be infected from eating vegetables from their cat-feces-infested gardens and more likely to be in a car crash driving home wasted after a Polka 10 miles away in the nearest town in a Lada held together with superglue while their affluent city friends take the bus or drive a BMW and eat vegetables from a mass-production farm in the Ukraine. Etc., etc. On the other hand, the animal data are real (good, controlled experiments) and so it is TEMPTING to believe but the human data are really not good experiments. WAY too many "confounding variables" and no controls. There is one study with US military recruits that found a very slight increase in the likelihood that if you entered the army Toxo-negative and became Toxo-positive while in the army you were ever so slightly to be discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia than someone who stayed Toxo-negative. But the difference was not statistically significant, in my opinion (predict 13 patients would be discharged with schizophrenia in the Toxo-positive group and saw 15 were - NOT a significant difference).

Bottom line, it's crap science and of course he could be right but so could the guy who says the world will end this November...