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Guinea worm disease reaches all-time low
- twiddling 4y agoLove how impactful Former President Carter has been.
- ceejayoz 4y agoI hope he gets to see a year of zero cases before he goes. Quite an accomplishment.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y agoHis administration was before my time, but he always seemed like an earnest and levelheaded man.
- pkaye 4y agoHe also personally repaired a Canadian nuclear reactor in meltdown. https://www.military.com/history/how-jimmy-carter-saved-canadian-nuclear-reactor-after-meltdown.html https://www.military.com/history/how-jimmy-carter-saved-cana...
- elevaet 4y agoWow what an interesting story. It's notable that he's still alive at age 99 despite being exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation in his 20s, and a history cancer in the family.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoWoah. Repaired it, and had radioactive urine for the next six months. That's... wow. Words fail me.
- akiselev 4y agoHe spent those months navigating at night by dribbling just a little every few feet.
- buildbot 4y agoHe was also president during 3 mile island, and helped calm everyone by visiting: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuclear-accident-at-three-mile-island https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuclear-accident...
- landemva 4y agoCarter basically stopped the nuclear energy industry by prohibiting reprocessing of used fuel. Without disposal or reprocessing, where does it go? https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/rossin.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/read...
- Jedd 4y ago> Carter basically stopped the nuclear energy industry by prohibiting reprocessing of used fuel. Without disposal or reprocessing, where does it go? This seems like a stretch. From the article you linked: Ford initiated the policy a year before Carter signed the EO. While I'm sure some other countries adopted the position due to political pressure from the USA, it doesn't explain why the fission nuclear energy industry everywhere has failed to excel. The PBS article, written two decades ago, describes an event that's now ~45 years in our past -- but it's not clear why that policy hasn't since been upturned, or what / who is responsible for its continuation (other than the tritely obvious answer 'every USA administration since then').
- barry-cotter 4y ago> it doesn't explain why the fission nuclear energy industry everywhere has failed to excel. Isn’t French nuclear powering 70% of all their needs?
- SuoDuanDao 4y agoare they reprocessing spent fuel? That seemed to be the crux of the parent comment.
- Xylakant 4y agoThey have nearly half of the worlds reprocessing capacity in their plant in La Hague https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoIn some iraqui oasis, people forget about president bush already, but the absence of this worm, will never be forgotten... Good deeds conquer the world, conquerors are just a seasonal redecoration blown away with time..
- nix23 4y ago>In some iraqui oasis, people forget about president bush already Sure they don't forgot the 275'000 death's?
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago4,424 soldiers died.. thats one american being worth 62 iraquis. One village killed for every soldier lost. They were not this draconion in the medieval ages. What a disgusting evil, murderous & godless monstrosity of an empire. Compare that to military civilian death rates in world war 2, with 25 million military deaths and 55 million civilian deaths. If were not for those alibi deaths, we would call it a mass execution.
- nix23 4y agoWell yes you are totally right...and that's what i try to say (that the people for sure not forgot bush's actions).
- andrewstuart 4y agoI had thought Bill and Melinda Gates played a significant role in this.
- capableweb 4y agoIt's mentioned that "GWD is spread by drinking water containing Guinea worm larvae" (https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/guineaworm/gen_info/faqs.html https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/guineaworm/gen_info/faqs.html) but also that "There was no chance for the disease to return after the last human case occurs", how does that fit together? Are people getting it from drinking from the same infected water sources as others, and by not seeing anyone getting it means there is no more infected water sources? Edit: Apropos nothing, it sounds terrible to get infected: > Guinea worm disease is usually contracted when people consume water contaminated with tiny crustaceans (called copepods) that eat Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis) larvae. The larvae develop into adults within the human host. After about a year, a meter-long pregnant female worm emerges slowly through a painful blister in the skin, often of the legs or feet. A sufferer may seek relief by dipping the affected limb in water. However, contact with water stimulates the emerging worm to release its larvae and start the cycle anew. Edit: Which, I think answered my question. Leaving my comment rather than deleting it as maybe others had the same question.
- dgrin91 4y agoI still don't understand how getting rid of the last human case will resolve the issue. Presumably these crustaceans & worms still exist in the wild? Isn't there always a chance for a new flareup to occur?
- ianburrell 4y agoThe parasite only effects humans and dogs. I guess that the worms in the water go away after a while. Prevention breaks the cycle.
- duskwuff 4y agoThe worms themselves don't live in the water at all. Its larvae are released into the water, and can only grow to maturity and reproduce if they're consumed by a host.
- 4y ago
- GauntletWizard 4y agoIs anyone doing anything to save the endangered Guinea Worm? Do we have DNA sequences, freeze-dried and fossilized remains, chemical analysis? Have we tested the viability of reviving eggs after a few years frozen? It's a terrible disease and I don't want anyone to ever get it again... but I'm something of a pessimist in terms of how eradicated we can make it, and believe there's probably still something to be learned from the methods by which it infects hosts - How it evades detection, stifles the body's immune system, or whatever. There is probably value in keeping a population around even once it's eliminated in the wild, for research and study... Though whether it's worth the time, effort, and risk is a question for epidemiologists, not me.
- nerdponx 4y agoSeems less risky than, say, keeping smallpox samples, or doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
- bastawhiz 4y agoAfter many decades of study by a huge number of scientists, I suspect there is probably little left to be learned. It's probably more likely that keeping specimens around would lead to the development of biological weapons than anything else, I'd think. We surely have the genes sequenced, that's a very safe way to study the worm without risking the mishandling of a live specimen.
- vkou 4y agoAs a biological weapon, the Guinea worm leaves much to be desired.
- markdown 4y agoThis is the kind of thinking that brought the world to it's knees in 2020.
- gus_massa 4y agoAs a wise woman said: > I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. It's a parasitic nematode, there are many of them. Just study the others. Looking at wikipedia, this one is quite similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguillicoloides_crassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguillicoloides_crassus but it infects eels instead of humans.
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoIf you are curious and have the stomach to watch, there's plenty of youtube videos like this one [0] to give you an idea of what actually being infected looks like. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCB1A2gFvuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCB1A2gFvuU
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- atorodius 4y agoI recently heard of the theory that a lot of contemporary stomach issues are due to the reduced worm diseases. The theory goes that our immune system evolved in a context of much more stomach parasites and adapted accordingly. Today it is 'bored'.
- ahoka 4y agoI don't think there are worms that live in stomachs.
- cglace 4y agoNot in the stomach, but tapeworms live in the intestines.
- benrapscallion 4y agoThis is known as the hygiene hypothesis.[1] [1] https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/8131 https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/8131
- inglor_cz 4y agoN == 1, my mother loves cleanliness and I lived in a very clean environment when I was a kid. I was also sick all the damn time. Once I went away from home at 18, my natural slobbiness prevailed. I am not a horrible pig, but nowhere near as keen on washing hands or fruit or wearing freshly pressed clothes as my mom is. And my immunity started improving visibly. As of now, I am 44 y.o. I almost never get sick, and if I do, it rarely lasts more than two days. I haven't had antibiotics prescribed since 2012 I think. If something itches in my throat, I flush my nose with salty/mineral water and the problem goes very reliably away. Even most of my alergies just went away, with the weird exception of cat allergy that I acquired in adult age.
- saiya-jin 4y agoThis is frequent, be glad you don't have lasting allergy issues like many do after being raised by 'germ freaks' to be impolite (its hard for me to be polite when parents damage lives and health of their kids with some fanatical zeal). I know few cases which are left with reduced quality of life (and probably length too) due to this, no matter what they try to overcome this.
- bookofjoe 4y agoThere are those who believe Jimmy Carter's efforts to eradicate this disease make him the greatest living ex-president by a wide margin.