The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has been buying Viagra, in a good cause: it seems to help beat one of the common malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum.
The mechanism is even analogous to Viagra's better-known effect: it makes infected red blood cells stiffer, which marks them down to be cleaned out by the spleen.
The full journal article is available at PLOS Pathogens: cAMP-Signalling Regulates Gametocyte-Infected Erythrocyte Deformability Required for Malaria Parasite Transmission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:37PM
I'll take my chances in South Korea or South Africa
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:47PM
South Korea was a pretty awful place for a long time. It was a warzone for many years, and then was governed by military dictatorships for a while. It didn't become what might be considered a democracy until the late 1980s. It's only within the past two decades that it has been something other than a shithole.
South Africa? Well, when a nation makes Detroit look like a safe and friendly place with a well-developed economy and excellent infrastructure, "shithole" is a word that does come to mind.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:55AM
South Korea is still an authoritarian shithole; it has ridiculous censorship and anti-privacy laws and the culture itself promotes authoritarianism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:48PM
So its like the US?