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Malaria is a serious economic drain on endemic countries. It's likely that without this disease burden, living conditions would improve, and the birth rate woul
by drinian 16y ago
Malaria is a serious economic drain on endemic countries. It's likely that without this disease burden, living conditions would improve, and the birth rate would go down in these places.
Also, I've had dengue fever, a relatively mild case that laid me up for a week and left my digestive system complaining for months. If I get it again, odds are it will be worse. I say that this is an experiment worth trying; it's not like mosquitoes can't be re-introduced into the wild if somehow necessary.
- michael_scheibe 16y agoI also used to assume that getting rid of a disease like malaria would cause populations to sky rocket in developing nations. Fortunately, this line of thinking is wrong. There is a great TED talk by Hans Rosling on global population growth that shows increased child survival rates result in smaller families and more prosperous nations. See http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...
- sorbus 16y agoThat's a good point. Eliminating the need for resources to fight one issue would allow for overpopulation to be mitigated (more education, and more resources poured into increasing available food and standards of living). Reducing the amount of time wasted being sick would also allow for people to improve their own standard of living (as I assume that you didn't get as much done, and were less happy, while you were sick, and during the recovery period).