Submitted via IRC for Bytram
The End Of Guinea Worm Was Just Around the Corner. Not Anymore
Next year was supposed to be the end of the line for Guinea worm.
The epic, decades-long campaign against the parasite — which humans and animals can contract from drinking water and which, about a year later, emerges as a worm up to 3 feet long from painful lesions on the feet or legs — has been one of the big success stories in modern global health. In the 1980s, more than 3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia contracted Guinea worm annually. Last year, that number was down to 28.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who turned 95 this week and whose nonprofit Carter Center has led much of the Guinea worm eradication effort, has said that he would "like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do."
But that goal moved further out of reach this week, when the World Health Organization quietly revealed that it has moved its expected Guinea worm eradication date, which had been 2020, ahead a decade, to 2030. The change was first reported in Nature.
Over the past few years, the eradication effort has faced a series of setbacks. Last year, South Sudan, one of the countries hit hardest by the parasite, declared victory over it. But only a few months later a new outbreak surfaced there.
In 2013, researchers began to notice that in Chad, Guinea worm was proliferating among dogs — including some cases in which a single dog could carry more than 60 worms. The number of known infected dogs in Chad is rising, from a few hundred cases at first to as many as 2,000 this year. The parasite also seems to be spreading among baboons in Ethiopia.
[...] "We redefined eradication as elimination of transmission in animals as well as in humans," Breman says. "We're not exactly sure when the last dog or other animal will give up their worms. So that means there will be this delay."
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The world was declared free of type 2 four years ago - and now the World Health Organization has said type 3 has also been eradicated.
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The End Of Guinea Worm Was Just Around the Corner. Not Anymore
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @07:25AM (14 children)
They are up to their usual games. Apparently there is more money to be had by saying they need more for continued eradication efforts than just claiming success and inventing a new name for the same disease like non-polio flaccid paralysis.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 06 2019, @07:58AM (7 children)
Disagree. It's hard as hell to eradicate anything. Life is like that. When you start to whip life's ass, it transforms in some way, even if it has to mutate. TFS pretty clearly states that these nasty little critters are making happy little homes in hosts that weren't so alluring in the past. They used to love humans, now they are moving into dog hosts, and baboons.
What's even more likely than the worms changing their way of life, is that we simply didn't notice that dogs and baboons were infected in the past. Humans have a pretty short attention span. We aren't really good at noticing things that are peripheral to our attention, either. The researcher who was focused on curing humans of this parasite wasn't likely looking very hard at dogs and baboons, and - whatever else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:08PM (3 children)
Yea, well that's the definition they should have used to begin with then. The definition everyone thinks of...But they couldn't because it had already been gamed for political purposes regarding measles and polio.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:28PM (2 children)
I'm not real sure that your point is accurate. Polio? I'm not aware of any creature on earth that harbors the polio virus. Presuming that no other animal hosts that virus, if and when no human is infected with that virus, we can presume that polio actually has been eradicated. I don't think we have to count artificial, intentional infections of research animals, for that purpose.
Measles? Can we get measles from animals? Again, I don't think that is a real concern. Dogs can get distemper, which is related to measles, but the diseases don't jump from dog to humans, or humans to dogs. I guess other animals develop diseases that are related to measles and distemper, but again, I don't think they jump species.
So, I'm not going to say that you're "wrong", but I'm pretty sure that you're kinda missing the point. If a disease only affects humans, then we can say that the disease is eradicated when no more humans have the disease.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)
No, it is you missing the point by focusing on this weird harbored by animals detail. The point is they are always changing the definitions of eradicated, eliminated, etc to suit whatever current agenda. Look here you have "measles eradicated in the Americas" even though there are still cases in the Americas: https://www.newsweek.com/measles-eradicated-americas-503521 [newsweek.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 06 2019, @03:30PM
Oh-kay, you win on that one.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
Actually, it's rather easy. The only problem here is that we *and* our pets are the ones on the menu. If this parasite Then you combine that with the shit living standards in places like most of South Sudan and the area (no running water, no sanitation) and you get what you get. Just 100 years ago, most of southern US was infested with parasites but today that problem is mostly even out of memory of most.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/ [pbs.org]
And this is just *part of* the infestations
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @04:03AM
Most of the southern US is *still* infested with parasites, but they also evolved to live in colder places like Detroit and Chicago.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday October 06 2019, @06:28PM
I suspect, however, that zoonosis was happening all along, but that they just didn't notice it as long as humans were widely affected, and that no transformation is indicated in this case. And also that dogs are likely to not be the only secondary carrier.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @08:20AM (4 children)
Usually I don't like these redefining words this way, but this one makes sense. With the worms ability to jump species, it makes sense that 'eradication' means completely wiping it out, otherwise there is the distinct possibility of another human outbreak or epidemic in the future. It also seems closer to the colloquial meaning because when you think of that word, you picture something totally gone, not just mostly gone. It's like how triceratops is eradicated but the Vaquita is not.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:06PM (2 children)
It will always "make sense", didn't the original definition make sense to you too? People drastically underestimate how easy it is to come up with things that make sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @07:19AM (1 child)
If your goal is no more infections in humans, then one of the requirements for that is, apparently, to eliminate it in other animals to prevent reservoirs in "cleared" areas. If, say, there were a subspecies of Guinea Worms that only infected other animals, but not humans, due to some sort of physiological difference, then adding that to your elimination criteria doesn't make sense given your goal, because they wouldn't cause human infections.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @03:08PM
And your point is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @11:59PM
Is it weird to be familiar with the long-extinct species but not the one that's still around?
That is, what's a vaquita? (Never mind; it's a small porpoise from the Gulf of California.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @09:05AM
I would rather have a disease be "100% nuked from orbit" than "100% eradicated, until a dog or baboon bites somebody".
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @09:20AM (2 children)
We'll shut down the economy over some damn salamander, owl, or migratory bird. Where is the love for this worm? What about our precious biodiversity?
Is it that "brown people" are held to a lower standard here? Can they kill off an entire species that annoys them, but American loggers with families to feed can just go die in a fire?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:20PM
Wow, what a fucking idiotic comment.....
And there you go, topping your original idiocy to a new level.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 06 2019, @03:00PM
And there are how many guinea worms on the frontiers of Montana again...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:18PM
- good news sir, the number if cases is down to 28 and next year we will have won
- finally! I was beginning to have enough of this desktop. I will find something about migrants in the South Pacific when we close down. bout time I get some different food. And what will you do when this is over?
- ... On the other hand sir, we got some unconfirmed reports about a resistant variety...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:57PM (1 child)
I thought human caused species extinction was a bad thing? Surprised the media censors left this thought progression in the article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @01:10AM
You might have a point for something like the mosquito, which participates in the food chain but this is a parasite which adds nothing to the food chain. Yet a Buddhist, who will kill no living animal, might point out that a parasite is better than a predator which will kill its meal while the parasite feeds and lets its prey live. Ah, but these subtle thoughts are wasted on one who brushes off the 6th mass extinction as fake news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @02:13PM (2 children)
From the headline, I was expecting to read why Trump was at fault. Guess he can't be blamed for everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @03:55PM (1 child)
I'm sure someone will find a 'butterfly effect' that'll point to Trump. After all... He's to blame for WWI, WWII, the dinosaur extinction, Satan, the missing Nixon tapes, and declassifying Pluto as a planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @10:26PM
Uh, no. Trump wants Pluto classified as a planet: https://www.businessinsider.com/pluto-is-a-planet-says-trump-nasa-chief-2019-8 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hartree on Sunday October 06 2019, @06:51PM (3 children)
It's going to be pretty hard to fully eradicate if it has animal reservoirs as numerous as dogs and baboons. And that's just the ones they know about. We may have to settle for just strong levels of control in humans and keeping monitoring so if it starts to come back in humans we can react quickly.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday October 07 2019, @02:39AM (2 children)
Even so, I'd say they've done pretty well:
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0005495 [plos.org]
"The numbers of individuals afflicted by Guinea Worm disease has declined from an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986 to only 25 cases in 2016."
But until you can keep dogs and baboons from drinking out of puddles...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday October 07 2019, @05:17AM (1 child)
"Even so, I'd say they've done pretty well:"
Indeed, it's a wonderfully successful campaign.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday October 07 2019, @05:48AM
Indeed! I was actually astonished to read that it was down to only 25 cases ... I remember when there were tons of videos of unfortunate people getting worms extracted by the roll-it-up-on-a-stick method. Only thing worse than finding a worm in your ankle... is finding half a worm...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @12:48AM
when you forget to say "knock on wood"
Those previous articles should have said "Guinea Worm Almost Eradicated! Knock on Wood"