Posted on 01/13/2015 10:54:36 AM PST by blam
Kevin Loria
January 13, 2015
Humanity is close to eradicating a human disease from the face of the earth for the second time in history. (The first eradicated human disease was smallpox, which last infected someone in 1977.)
That's pretty incredible — but it's a project that has required close to three decades of work, and it isn't finished.
On Monday, former US President Jimmy Carter announced at the opening of "Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease," a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, that there were just 126 cases of Guinea worm disease left in the world.
In 1986, when the Carter Center began leading the effort to eradicate Guinea worm, there were approximately 3.5 million cases in 20 countries, including India, Pakistan, and Yemen, with the rest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Now, "we know everybody who has Guinea worm," Carter said at the exhibit opening. And healthcare workers have those 126 people carefully isolated, so they shouldn't be able to infect anyone else.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Problem is that many diseases have reservoirs in the natural world. The only ones that you can really eradicate are those that have human infection as an obligate part of their life cycle.
Ebola, for instance, is endemic in fruit bats and probably other animals. Plague and hantavirus in the SW USA are endemic in several types of rodents.
>> by some unknown power, condemned me to hell for supporting vaccinations
Did you ask him Who blessed humans with an immune system capable of learning thread response, and Who gave the scientists and doctors with the knowledge and skill to unlock the secrets of vaccination?
“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” Proverbs 25:2
Hubris will be mankind’s downfall. We haven’t eradicated anything.
ping...
Link won`t work, so what`s a guinea worm? Is that something guinea pigs catch?
A target of opportunity. Scientists believe that humans are the only host for one part of the life cycle of the Guinea worm. Get rid of the worm in humans for long enough and the worm is gone. Hope they're right about no animal reservoir. A minor disease compared to smallpox but a serious problem if you live in that part of the world. A worm one meter long living inside you.
If that Islam only left us with a shoulder scar.
“A worm one meter long living inside you.”
I’m guessing it doesn’t give you cool powers like the ones on the “Stargate” tv show, eh?
The parasite is introduced by drinking infected water, but the water is infected when the worm begins to emerge from the body and people immerse the open sore in the water to relieve the pain, allowing the worm to release larvae back into the water supply.
I'm no epidemiologist by any stretch, but my understanding of the rationale is that if all human infections are eliminated and re-infection prevented—i.e. no one drinks unfiltered water or exposes the water supply to guinea worm larvae—then the guinea worm's life cycle will be broken and the disease eradicated. There's no known case of guinea worm infection recurring after it has been eliminated from an area in which it was endemic, and this particular species doesn't infect other animals that could pass it on to people.
Whether that means the parasite is still in the wild and infection could theoretically flare up again because someone drink some unfiltered water, I couldn't say for sure. I suspect not, if "eradicated" actually means what it means.
Speaking of disease eradication....
I have to give peanut brain credit. The Carter Foundation's work on tropical diseases has not just been a good thing, it has been a substantial good thing. Dracunculosis (Guinea Worm disease) was once a fairly widespread misery. Carter's folks found it's life cycle could be interrupted quite cheaply if only someone were willing to travel to remote areas and put in the work. Disease eradication is a permanent benefit to all of mankind, at least so long as crazy scientists or politicians don't undo it. And giving someone as far left as Carter credit for disease eradication is NOT unprecedented. The concept of disease eradication was first suggested by the Soviet Union. At one of the WHO meetings in mid 1960s to plan the world's annual smallpox 'control' measures the Soviet representative (smallpox then still being endemic in USSR) pointed out that with a change in strategy and tactics, from 'smallpox control' to 'smallpox eradication,' that smallpox might be eradicated completely for the same amount of money the Americans were annually happily spending to hold it at 3 million deaths a year world wide. Five years later, using American money but Soviet strategies smallpox was essentially done. That certainly counts among the greatest benefits to mankind ever to come out the the USSR, if not THE greatest. Alas it makes it all the sadder that the USSR weaponized smallpox and may have distributed it to bad folks. But if the USSR deserves major credit for ending smallpox I'm willing to extend some to that otherwise worthless Carter for this. BTW, if this is eradicated it would be the third disease eradicated. The second was Rinderpest, which was the worst plague affecting cattle and many related species, and which was the ancestor to human measles.
Although neither rates very high, I would say that a fish comes a lot closer to cracking out of the negative numbers on the ‘warm and fuzzy’ scale than does the Guinea worm.
Also protecting it does not inconvenience any evil white men or evil middle class people, so what’s the point?
Can’t enjoy the Great Outdoors with mosquitoes.
I don’t know what their gripe is with termites. They don’t gnaw up your cave.
The fascinating thing about this disease is how the worms like to emerge from the human body in areas around the face and genitalia.
It takes weeks for the worm to emerge—1-3 feet long— from the body.
Victims have been known to roll the worms up on sticks as they emerge from the body.
Harming the worm during this time is unwise since it releases painful secretions into the body when damaged.
Once the worm emerges fully, you can resume regular activity.
Why aren’t they setting aside critical habitat for this worm?
That is assuming the larvae don’t infect other animals.
The WHO is working hard to eliminate polio. In unstable areas of the world, it is very difficult to conduct vaccination campaigns... but there is progress.
This is very good news. I have been watching this for quite some time—I did not realize that eradication had come so close, just in the last few months.
While it will be nice to celebrate the end of Guinea worm disease, this accomplishment will rob me of the pleasure of being able to show really gross and yet captivating pictures of Guinea worm removal to various students and visitors. Although I suppose I can still show the gross pictures even when the disease is gone.
Thanks for the ping!
Good for President Carter.
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