Great news, although I suspect the Save the Guinea Worm Foundation may not agree with me: http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm/
It would be a great business card to be an agent of the Guinea Worm Destruction Cartel.
The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#32Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#33Going 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…
I agree with the idea of the unknown consequences of eliminating pieces of ecosystems. We've seen the impact of the removal of apex predators like wolves, and movements like rewilding champion the idea of reintroduction, rebalancing of the ecosystem through brining such animals back. So we seem to think that maintaining ecosystems is important now. Complexity theory and modeling could be very useful to "estimating" t…
The obvious ecological impact of erradicating the guinea worm is decreased pressure on the population of Humans. However, most people would agree that it is not ethical to intentionally allow diseases to roam free as a way to control the size of human populations...
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#34Going 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…
I'm absolutely ok with eliminating most (or all, really) species of mosquitoes.
I'm optimistic that in the (very near) future the ability to do this rests with a few people who decide it is worth doing, and worth spending single digit millions of dollars to do it, vs. any organization with a deliberative, democratic process.
It would be hilarious to successfully wipe out mosquitoes and then have people try to sue (or governments attempt criminal charges).
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
More importantly than implants, a better understanding of the immune response against worms would help the development of vaccines. There are other parasitic worms out there, such as schistossoma, that we are nowhere near from erradicating and for which a vaccine would help tremendously.
However, researchers unfortunately do not get much funding to study these neglected tropical diseases...
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#36Going 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…
As a contrarian in these topics, without being able to prove it, i assume that nothing terribly Bad can come from exterminating a species, even if it were bees, and their connections to the ecosystem are well understood. Nature is a rough place as niches tend to fill up extremely fast. So if we were to exterminate mosquitos, my gut says we'd survive it. But luckily my gut doesnt make Policy.
Nature rebalances extremely fast but its does so by catastrophically changing into a different state instead of having old niches be refilled. One of the famous examples is how experimentally removing starfish (a sea urchin predator) from a kelp forest resulted in an explosion of the sea urchin population and a transformation of the kelp forest into a "sea urchin desert".
There was a nice article linked in HN about this recently:
http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-ecologist-who-threw-s...
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#37Going 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…
Erradicating a parasite like the the guinea worm is a bit like erradicating Smallpox or Polio. The ecossystem impact that you would expect is a change in human population due to the improved health.
However, we consider it more ethical to control the size of the human population with voluntary birth control instead of terrible diseases :)
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#38Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that we've unintentionally wiped out so many species lends credence to the idea that, on average, very few individual specie are all that important. Of course, just leave it to us to find the exception someday...
And introduced destructive species like kudzu and the grey squirrel. These have results which are certainly bad, but far far away from causing any kind of catastrophic ecological collapse.
The demise of the Red Squirrel (in the UK) maybe more due the the loss of habitat than than because of the Grey Squirrel. The Grey Squirrel may just be a convenient scapegoat.
Re: The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm
#40I 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.
Thank you! Preventative eyewash is the best eyewash.
Instead, google image search for:
Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor
https://www.google.com/search?q=jimmy+carter+for+cancer+surv...