The World’s Last Worm: A Dreaded Disease Nears Eradication | Hacker News Reader

The World’s Last Worm: A Dreaded Disease Nears Eradication

scientificamerican.com

112 pointsjoeyespo43 comments

Interesting confluence of circumstances making this possible. For one thing, the worm can't survive in any form outside humans for any significant period of time; there's no dormant form that can lurk in the soil or water, and it apparently can't infect other animals. So if all humans were infection-free for 2-3 weeks (the longest its larvae can live in water supplies), it'd completely die out. And on top of that, it can infect humans through only one route, and that's a route that can be blocked with basic measures not requiring technological sophistication (e.g. filtering water through cloth), because it enters only via ingestion of macroscopic fleas that contain the larvae.

In other words, basic sanitation would have wiped this life form out - its continued existence speaks of tens of thousands of years of unbroken poverty. And it is only being eradicated because of cleverly-invented measures that can be undertaken while still poor.

Humanity, shame on you for leaving these people behind.

300 years ago, the richest people in the world didn't have what we consider basic sanitation today.

Or, if you want to try to be a little more positive, let's be happy that we have here another case of science lifting people out of misery.

No, it's particularly that kind of rah-rah I'm pointing out the hole in. Our well-resourced science and our well-resourced NGOs have allowed us to construct and communicate a solution to a disease of poverty that works without lifting them out of poverty.

It's certainly a small improvement, but lionizing it uncritically amounts to justifying the status quo.

So you're saying that the only acceptable solution is to lift these people out of poverty? What about the people that are affected in the meantime? The end of poverty isn't something that's just waiting for someone to snap their fingers for it to come to a crashing halt.

Also, depending on where you're talking about in the world, poverty is dependent on the local political situation. See North Korea for example. If I sent boatloads of supplies and money to North Korea, what are the chances that they were reach the common man (instead of going towards the military and ruling elite)?

Many kinds of adequate sanitation would not have resulted in filtering the water as appropriate to exclude the parasites.

Even the wealthiest still drank water that ultimately came from the watering hole, thousands of years ago. Without much scientific understanding there is little reason to believe effective intervention would have been hoarded by the rich.

1. It's only fairly recently that anyone could eliminate this parasite, so I don't know how you can speak of "tens of thousands of years of unbroken poverty". Almost half of Europe was killed off by disease less than a thousand years ago, and the flu was still killing fifty million people less than a hundred years ago.

2. You imply that the methods employed--cloth filters and larvicide--are carefully constructed to reveal as little as possible to the villagers in order to keep them "still poor". I suppose it's just coincidence that they also happen to be the most cost effective and direct methods?

3. This is exactly how poverty is ended. Previously, this parasite would consume the time and health of the people of South Sudan. Now, they have those resources to spend in a manner of their choosing, such as learning about how to improve other aspects of their lives.

I wouldn't see this with so much tint and roses

I can bet that the first persons calling for this system "filtration" to be used, or maybe boiling water before drinking, would be called sorcerers, stupid, would be ridiculed, etc

But still, the solution found was good and it's a "reality check" for those "TED speakers" that created a new filter that "only costs $200"

I am not sure.... I wasn't sure if the SA article was saying that the worm only could exist in humans or that it had been eradicated everywhere else (perhaps because humans might be a preferred host).

So I did some research. I started with Wikipedia which said the worm was known to infect some other animals, and then jumped off from there. Then I came across this site: http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Guinea+worm+...

It turns out the worm's lifecycle is fascinating. The embryos apparently are parasites of water fleas, and are consumed by humans when they drink water containing infected water fleas. The embryos then burrow into the intestines and from there into other tissues.

also according to http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Dracunculus at least some species of domestic animals can carry the worm. It doesn't say whether the worms can effectively reproduce in horses, cattle, or dogs though.

Also of note: Save the Guinea Worm Foundation.

http://www.deadlysins.com/guineaworm/index.htm

Took some Googling for me to verify that it's indeed a joke.

Yeah, the only real hints that it was fake were the bits about people volunteering to be infected with them, and the part where the foundation doesn't take donations so they can remain non-partisan.

But, in all seriousness, I think we should at least sequence this thing's genome before we purposely cause its extinction. Who knows if some enzyme it secretes might be valuable to modern medicine?

It's interesting that no one cries out over the extinction of species that are harmful to us. Not that I mind; some extinctions are good. Reminds me of a passage from a science fiction novel I read a while back.

"No ballads were written of this great battle; the official account was curt to the point of insult:

"'Technologically Super-advanced and Aggressive Alien Species VI Engaged and Genocided.'

"Alien Species II, III, IV and V had fought longer, more spectacular campaigns, but they were just as dead. ...

"For humanity remained, as it had always been, a decisive and a ruthless species. The Government of the Solar Neighbourhood preached peace and liberty, and tolerance for all sentient creatures. But any alien that threatened the wellbeing of humanity would be eradicated, without a second thought. That was the way it always had been, and always would be."

Palmer, Philip (2010-10-28). Version 43.

Sure they do - in fact, the US and Russia are not destroying the last of the smallpox "for the foreseeable future":

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8267370/We-must...

This results from an anthro-centric cost/benefit analysis, not just a "save the poor deadly organisms", but I expect the same would be true for just about any organism that human science can maintain, and attempts to destroy.

Evolution means adaptability

Sometimes it goes towards being good at fights, sometimes it goes towards being good at fleeing them.

In this case, 'Technologically Super-advanced and Pacific Alien Species X left to their own devices'

Define harmful thought. I do not want poisonous snakes or tigers or great whites exterminated.

I would even think twice about mosquitos.

But this creepy worm thing I have no problem with.

While I agree it's creepy, it would be possible in future to engineer these kind of ogranism, to work inside human bodies and cure them.

I knew someone who handed these straws out in Africa a few years back: http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/ They are simple and inexpensive but they perfectly filer out the larvae from untreated water.

I'm sure he'd be super impressed to see how dramatically the numbers have fallen.

Good news! Although am i the only one a little disappointed that this is only the 2nd we've wiped out in our long history?

We also wiped out rinderpest. It was a cattle disease, but it means a lot from an agricultural perspective.

There are plenty of dangerous lifeforms we could realistically stamp out -- grizzly bears, for example. The pertinent question is whether it would be worth the cost. This organism can be defeated forever with handmade water filters, and we'll never miss it. But we could burn all the swamps in the world (along with countless "bystander" species) and still fail to wipe out malaria.

Alpha predators like brown bears kill so few humans that they aren't worth the effort to chase down and exterminate (see Monster Of God by David Quammen). The real monsters are mosquitos and the disease bearing organisms they vector.

> Grizzly bears, for example

And a terrible example!

It was a perfect example. His point was that it would be ridiculous to try.

> There are plenty of dangerous lifeforms we could realistically stamp out -- grizzly bears, for example.

Your facetious comment aside, it really depends on what we consider a "lifeform". A number of viruses and bacteria can be wiped out without affecting other species ... largely, because we are their entire ecosystem, almost like this worm.

Are most potent weapons are vaccines, antibiotics, and proper hygiene. With a combination of those, we can eliminate much of what currently ails us.

Except we don't have a vaccine for many viruses and on the antibiotics front we're fighting a war against evolution; and arguably we're not using our ammunition very wisely. Or is that fear mongering?

We were well on our way to wiping out malaria until DDT was banned. Millions of people have died due to that decision.

The argument is that DDT causes at least as many deaths as malaria and loads of collateral damage in the ecosystem. There are significant advances on the horizon that look to be the solution to malaria.

malaria is particularly widespread, so some pretty strong evidence would be required to establish that DDT killed more people than malaria.

DDT is still used for mosquito control.

> We were well on our way to wiping out malaria until DDT was banned.

Wrong:

1. Mosquitoes were becoming DDT-resistant. A lot of them still are.

2. DDT is still used in some places, most notably the ones where malaria is still a problem.

3. Mosquito netting is still a big lifesaver in the regions DDT is still used. Why, if DDT works so well, would we need the massive mosquito netting drives?

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3186

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/01/24/ddt/

> DDT is banned from agricultural use (and rightly so because of environmental damage) but can still be used for disease prevention. JTFCSS pretends that there is a ban so they can hang malaria deaths around the neck of environmentalists.

[snip]

> Yes, the mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn’t work any more. In fact, that is the reason why they stopped using DDT in Sri Lanka. It wasn’t because of any ban—it was because it stopped being effective.

It's illustrative to compare the number of parasitic species eliminated to that of non-parasitic species. It's a whole lot easier to knock the crap out of a passenger pigeon than A. aegypti, because the pigeon hasn't been under the selective pressure that the mosquito has.

I think the passenger pigeon just got surprised by a new threat to which it couldn't adapt fast enough. It happens.

Their breeding strategy required massive colonies to fill the local predators' bellies and still have survivors. They didn't really count on a predator that would take entire colonies. Nets, alcohol soaked grain, fire arms, explosives, coupled with a huge national demand coupled with a vast transportation network were nothing like foxes, snakes, and birds of prey.

Musk oxen have the same problem. "Back into a mass protecting the young with your heads facing outward" doesn't work well against rifles. They don't have much of a plan B. Being dark on a barren, white landscape much of the year also sucks.

Many of the pelagic fish also fall into this category. They aren't built for a predator that will scoop up an entire 4000kg school of fish in one swipe.

I'm not able to find any good information on it, but wouldn't there have been some host-specific parasites that went extinct along with their host? It's possible they're even uncatalogued ones, if (as seems likely) parasites that target species other than humans or commercially valuable livestock aren't as well documented as those that do target us and our animals.

From that perspective, it's not very surprising that human-targeted parasites haven't been going extinct without substantial purposeful effort, because their host has been very successful at increasing and spreading its population. If you think of the human population as the relevant "environment" for those species, then the environment is in very good shape...

Oh absolutely. The idea that there's a comprehensive catalog of species extinct and extant is a joke.

And humans, with their ability to thrive in basically any climactic zone, are the ultimate pest species. No wonder that vectors that spread human disease are also so successful -- so much meat to prey upon.

"And humans, with their ability to thrive in basically any climactic zone, are the ultimate pest species." Oh I don't know cock roaches thrive really well in every zone too. And they carry countless diseases too, along with their redundant systems and all. Or how about rats? Also littered with pests themselves there isn't a place on this earth that hasn't been touched by rats.

Roaches and rats would never have spread as far as they have without humans carrying them along.

How do cockroaches and rats cope with Antarctica?

We don't cope with Antarctica all that well. Otherwise there would be a permanent population down there.

They don't. The caloric expenditure required to survive in a desert like that is only available to humanity.

And bears.. and penguins.. and lemmings..

You appear to have the Arctic and Antarctic confused. They're opposite ends of the world. There aren't any bears or lemmings in Antarctica at all. And there are penguins in the region, but they're amphibious rather than really being stuck on Antarctica.

Well, you're ⅓ there, considering that there are no terrestrial mammals in Antarctica. But I was talking about weed species, not those particularly evolved for a given niche.

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