4 ms·

Harvard Engineers Develop Robot to Help Fight Malaria

10 points by snakedyourwave 12y ago

webmaven 12y ago
From the headline I imagined autonomous drones sucking mosquitoes into traps, or perhaps mosquito-sized drones interfering with their reproduction somehow. I did NOT expect a Kickstarter campaign to fund a robot that beheads individual mosquitoes and extracts their salivary glands in order to manufacture a vaccine. The world is truly becoming stranger than we can imagine.
- snakedyourwave 12y ago
  Yea man, this Nature article about the vaccine seems as surprised as you http://www.nature.com/news/zapped-malaria-parasite-raises-vaccine-hopes-1.13536 http://www.nature.com/news/zapped-malaria-parasite-raises-va...
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  They should name the robot the Mosquillotine.
spiritplumber 12y ago
This is truly awesome! If anyone wants, I have the schematics for a bat chirper (pretends to make bat sounds) to keep mosquitos away and attract bats.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rmah 12y ago
This is an awesome project. Deserving of one's donation far beyond 99.9% of the other crowdfunding projects out there. But why isn't the NIH or FDA or NSF or even the WHO funding this? Has government funding for health care dried up to this degree?
- snakedyourwave 12y ago
  They posted a video response on their Indiegogo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgPbBAa6dj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgPbBAa6dj0 As I understand it, there are two reasons as to why they've turned to crowdfunding. One, large funding bodies are more concerned with the vaccine's clinical trials right now, and will worry about scale up of vaccine production when the time comes. Two, with respect to reason one (and the ignorance of the aforementioned funding bodies), Sanaria wants to do all it can to keep vaccine production costs down and vaccine supply high so that the eventual price/dose in a developing context is as low as possible, hence the development of a dissection robot. The CEO has also mentioned on various interviews/IAmA that the price/dose for the US Military and avg. Western traveler will be significantly more expensive in order to help keep the price down for underserved populations. (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1k164k/iama_stephen_l_hoffman_the_ceo_of_sanaria_inc/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1k164k/iama_stephen_l_...)

From the headline I imagined autonomous drones sucking mosquitoes into traps, or perhaps mosquito-sized drones interfering with their reproduction somehow. I did NOT expect a Kickstarter campaign to fund a robot that beheads individual mosquitoes and extracts their salivary glands in order to manufacture a vaccine. The world is truly becoming stranger than we can imagine.

snakedyourwave 12y ago
Yea man, this Nature article about the vaccine seems as surprised as you http://www.nature.com/news/zapped-malaria-parasite-raises-vaccine-hopes-1.13536 http://www.nature.com/news/zapped-malaria-parasite-raises-va...
ForHackernews 12y ago
They should name the robot the Mosquillotine.

spiritplumber 12y ago

This is truly awesome! If anyone wants, I have the schematics for a bat chirper (pretends to make bat sounds) to keep mosquitos away and attract bats.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rmah 12y ago

This is an awesome project. Deserving of one's donation far beyond 99.9% of the other crowdfunding projects out there. But why isn't the NIH or FDA or NSF or even the WHO funding this? Has government funding for health care dried up to this degree?

snakedyourwave 12y ago
They posted a video response on their Indiegogo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgPbBAa6dj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgPbBAa6dj0 As I understand it, there are two reasons as to why they've turned to crowdfunding. One, large funding bodies are more concerned with the vaccine's clinical trials right now, and will worry about scale up of vaccine production when the time comes. Two, with respect to reason one (and the ignorance of the aforementioned funding bodies), Sanaria wants to do all it can to keep vaccine production costs down and vaccine supply high so that the eventual price/dose in a developing context is as low as possible, hence the development of a dissection robot. The CEO has also mentioned on various interviews/IAmA that the price/dose for the US Military and avg. Western traveler will be significantly more expensive in order to help keep the price down for underserved populations. (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1k164k/iama_stephen_l_hoffman_the_ceo_of_sanaria_inc/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1k164k/iama_stephen_l_...)