I wholeheartedly support your sentiment - we should not avoid trying to solve really bad problems because the solution causes some smaller problems. However, l

I wholeheartedly support your sentiment - we should not avoid trying to solve really bad problems because the solution causes some smaller problems. However, looking through the wikipedia page on guinea worm [1] it seems that people are infected by drinking contaminated water and most of the prevention revolves around filtering water. Its true that part of the worms lifecycle involves infected people stepping in drinking water, but owning shoes is unlikely to prevent that. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_worm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_worm