Guinea worm. Good news for a change.

[SkepticLance]

From a newspaper article this morning, I see an ex US President doing something wonderful. Jimmy Carter has spearheaded a campaign to counter a truly dreadful affliction - Guinea worm in Africa. This is described in :

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/international/africa/26worm.html

 

The eggs of this worm are picked up by drinking contaminated water. The worm grows inside the body, to sometimes almost a metre long, at which stage it 'eats' its way out to spill its eggs. The pain is apparently excruciating, and there is no cure.

 

However, by changing the quality of drinking water, the entire life cycle can be stopped in its tracks. Jimmy Carter managed to raise a little over US$ 200 million, and his team has wiped out this beast, village by village, across its range, by stopping the transfer of eggs to human host. Where once over 3 million people suffered, it is now down to about 10,000 and looks like it will be the first disease after smallpox to go totally extinct.

 

What a great example! Instead of spending 2 trillion dollars killing over a million people in Iraq, Carter used his good offices to save 3 million and stop an entire disease in its tracks.

[Gilded]

Yikes! I didn't even know such a worm existed. The description sounds like something from a scifi-horror movie. Well, good riddance to them.

 

Ex-presidents in general seem pretty enthusiastic about helping foreign nations.

Aside from normally being esteemed diplomats afterwards, I wonder if there's some sort of "I've had enough of these buggers" mentality regarding their own country.

[Kyrisch]

These kinds of parasites are truly amazing. The burning sensation is not merely a consequence of the burrowing through the skin, it is intentionally induced so as to make the host immerse the blister of the emerging pregnant female in water, allowing the reproductive cycle to continue by releasing new larvae into the water.

[SkepticLance]

The thing I find uplifting about this development is that it is a permanent fix. Once the last guinea worm and guinea worm egg is gone, this ailment will never, ever afflict anyone ever again.

 

We have already seen this with smallpox. Not quite a permanent fix, since there are stocks of smallpox virus held by US and Russian labs. If they can be induced to destroy them, humankind will be utterly and totally free of smallpox for ever.

 

Polio is another that is declining, and may become extinct. It was on the verge of extinction, when a few idiot Muslims in Nigeria told the locals that the polio vaccinations were Americans trying to spread AIDS. Doh! However, that setback, in spite of causing unnecessary and untold misery to thousands of new victims, is on the way to being overcome. Polio can be rendered extinct also.

 

Another is leprosy. Once the last leper is cured, that is it - for ever.

 

Any illness that afflicts only humans can be rendered extinct, and we should be putting every effort into doing so. There may even be some ills that are carried by certain animals that can be eliminated totally, with vaccinations of the carrier animals also.

 

I see this as a wonderful legacy to leave to posterity.