Flegr launched a study of 592 residents of central Prague and found that people with the parasite were 2.7 times more likely to be involved in traffic accidents than age-matched controls free of the infection. Since the strength of epidemiology lies in numbers, he conducted a follow-up study of a much larger population, tracking the incidence of traffic accidents in 3,890 Czech military draftees. Those identified as having the parasite at the start of the investigation went on to have significantly more crashes. “I estimate that as many as a million road deaths a year can be blamed on toxo,”
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