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The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

#22

Post by tim333 »

Kenji wrote: post #20
ufo wrote: post #19

Great news, although I suspect the Save the Guinea Worm Foundation may not agree with me: http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm/

Haha, that's kinda cute. Does the author of this piece volunteer as a host for the worms?

>There is no vaccine for Guinea worm, because the parasite induces no immune response.

The lack of immune response could be interesting to investigate scientifically for designing implants. I'm sure the Save the Guinea Worm guy would be delighted to play host as you suggest.

Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

#23

Post by sctb »

HippoViolation wrote: post #8
enraged_camel wrote: post #2

Going back to the conversations we've had in the Zika thread[1], why are we OK with eliminating the Guinea Worm, but not certain species of mosquitoes? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322885 A lot of people in that thread made the argument that we shouldn't exterminate a species without first fully understanding the consequences. Yet we seem to be doing that here with this parasite, and no one seems to be…

ok captain picard

Please don't comment like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

#26

Post by Aelinsaar »

bertil wrote: post #12

I remember a story about a worm that is extracted using a stick: the worm is presented with the stick, wrap itself around it and you can pull it out. Presumably, that image of a long animal around a stick as a healing process is what gave the caducean, the symbol to medicine of a snake around a stick. Anyone familiar with anything like this?

I would suggest that you not google image search that, as I did. There are many modern results, and it's quite awful.

Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

#27

Post by toomanybeersies »

BearOso wrote: post #25
ufo wrote: post #19

Great news, although I suspect the Save the Guinea Worm Foundation may not agree with me: http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm/

The reference to Swift at the bottom suggests this is satire.

Upon further investigation of the man's twitter and blog, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

#28

Post by lovemenot »

praptak wrote: post #10

I wonder how much danger there is of the worm finding a new host species. I mean an animal other than dog and possibly harder to control. That would be a disastrous outcome.

Little danger, I guess. The eradication program introduces no new evolutionary pressure on worms' lavae living in water. Those filtered out or killed in their hosts are removed from the gene pool anyway.

On the other hand, we may discover more such preexisting hosts, as dogs. A parasitic relationship that evolved over a much longer period than a few mere decades and evolving from a much larger population than the few individuals thought to remain in the wild.

Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm

#30

Post by themartorana »

ufo wrote: post #19

Great news, although I suspect the Save the Guinea Worm Foundation may not agree with me: http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm/

I imagine the backlash against trying to eradicate mosquitos - the disappearance of which had all but proven to have a minuscule (if at all measurable) impact on the planet, and would save an insane number of human lives - as being thunderous. So it's cute that there's someone pulling for the Guinea Worm - even if it is satirical.
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