The Curse of Konzo (2018) | Hacker News Reader

The Curse of Konzo (2018)

damninteresting.com

42 pointsCobaltFire9 comments

> Early in the investigation, an elderly man in one of the affected villages told the doctors, “This disease has happened because the rain has not washed our cassava.” Perhaps understandably, investigators initially ignored him. The practice of disease outbreak investigation involves an established sequence of steps concerned with relating cases to “time, place, and person.” Heeding advice from grizzled old locals does not feature prominently in field epidemiology manuals.

This is so incredibly frustrating. Why wouldn't you at least take this as a clue? The arrogance of Western medicine and science is astounding sometimes.

.. and (but I realise this is hindsight)

> almost invariably in rural villages that had already endured months of a severe drought

You'd think to look for nutritional reasons in a drought, not infections or viruses, which, afaik, tend to be associated with water.

You're looking at it with the benefit of filtered hindsight. How many other things were they also told? They had to distribute their investigative efforts to what they reasonably thought were the most likely culprits. Once those didn't pan out, they did take the clue:

> However, as each new test failed to yield evidence for any old or new pathogens, the investigators returned to the old man’s words. Cassava was an important element of the local diet in Nampula, and therefore hard for Cliff and her team to overlook if they were considering a nutritional cause for the puzzling paralysis.

Doesn't seem arrogant at all.

> The arrogance of Western medicine and science is astounding sometimes.

As opposed to what?

The Curse of Konzo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16979456 - May 2018 (5 comments)

> For most of us, the distinct odour of bitter almonds is indeed the scent of cyanide, but up to 40 percent of the population —presumably including a few unfortunate detectives —have a complete genetic inability to smell the poison.

Now I'm curious whether I'm one of them--I suspect it might be difficult to order some bitter almonds to test, IIRC they aren't generally sold in their toxic form in the US.

Well… if you can’t immediately taste a bitter almond after reading the above, I’m afraid you’re part of the 40%. (Assuming you have had almonds before)

> if you can’t immediately taste a bitter almond

If I trust the article's claim that the distinctive smell IS the poison compounds themselves, then wouldn't that mean I'd first have to encounter raw untreated bitter almonds, which are seldom sold precisely due to safety concerns?

Bitter almonds that have been treated (boiling, roasting) are more common, but in that case the poisonous compounds have been removed (or massively reduced) in which case how do you know you're not smell-remembering some other distinctive compound?

There was an annoying news article wondering how people figured how to safely prepare poisonous food. It is actually quite simple. A lot of people can taste/smell the cyanide and making cassava taste good is also what makes it safe to eat. It is not like cassava is an instant death sentence if you eat it raw.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com