
The World Is Closer Than Ever to Eradicating Guinea Worm - dpflan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-world-is-closer-than-ever-to-eradicating-guinea-worm/2016/08/20/59d4a752-55bd-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html
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enraged_camel
Going back to the conversations we've had in the Zika thread[1], why are we OK
with eliminating the Guinea Worm, but not certain species of mosquitoes?

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322885)

A lot of people in that thread made the argument that we shouldn't exterminate
a species without first fully understanding the consequences. Yet we seem to
be doing that here with this parasite, and no one seems to be saying, "but...
think of the ecosystem!"

~~~
maxerickson
One factor is that there is a lot less "we" involved with the Guinea Worm.

I mean, good luck suppressing the knowledge that filtering your drinking water
through a cloth prevents a devastating episode where a 3 foot worm crawls out
of your body.

The proposed programs for eradicating mosquitoes involve things like releasing
millions of dollars of genetically modified mosquitoes and putting larvicides
and insecticides in all known bodies of standing water.

~~~
chr1
Using gene drive doesn't require releasing huge number of modified mosquitos,
and doesn't require larvicides.

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woliveirajr
> There is no vaccine for Guinea worm, because the parasite induces no immune
> response.

So, eradicating it might lead to the loss of some knowledge, on how it doesn't
trigger some immune response. Specially because if you pull the worm, it
retracts and causes infection, so the mechanism might not be that simple.

Even more: few years ago (2013) [1], it was expected that soon it would have
been eliminated, because dogs had their own species of guinea worm and
wouldn't substitute human beings as the necessarily step in the worm life
cycle.

[1] [http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/24/the-
guine...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/24/the-guinea-worm)

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bertil
I remember a story about a worm that is extracted using a stick: the worm is
presented with the stick, wrap itself around it and you can pull it out.
Presumably, that image of a long animal around a stick as a healing process is
what gave the caducean, the symbol to medicine of a snake around a stick.

Anyone familiar with anything like this?

~~~
Aelinsaar
I would suggest that you not google image search that, as I did. There are
many modern results, and it's quite awful.

~~~
bertil
Yup: girlfriend is an MD, I learnt the hard way to deactivate Google Image
before any medical search. I would ban any relation to dermatology from GI if
I could.

~~~
Aelinsaar
Oh god yes. My "Cannot unsee" file is overwhelmingly dermatological, or burns.

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kpwagner
Neal DeGrasse Tyson did an interview with Jimmy Carter on his podcast
(Startalk); the interview covered the guinea worm in detail--very interesting.

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praptak
I wonder how much danger there is of the worm finding a new host species. I
mean an animal other than dog and possibly harder to control. That would be a
disastrous outcome.

~~~
lovemenot
Little danger, I guess. The eradication program introduces no new evolutionary
pressure on worms' lavae living in water. Those filtered out or killed in
their hosts are removed from the gene pool anyway.

On the other hand, we may discover more such preexisting hosts, as dogs. A
parasitic relationship that evolved over a much longer period than a few mere
decades and evolving from a much larger population than the few individuals
thought to remain in the wild.

~~~
appleflaxen
> introduces no new evolutionary pressure on worms' lavae living in water

not being able to reproduce (by infecting a human, which is required in the
reproductive cycle) is just as real of a new evolutionary pressure as dying
is.

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rer
It's an actual worm.

 _The male Guinea worm dies, but the female worm incubates in a person’s body
for a year, where it grows three to five feet long. It forms a horribly
painful and itchy blister until it erupts through the flesh of the legs, arms
or even chest_

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ufo
Great news, although I suspect the Save the Guinea Worm Foundation may not
agree with me: [http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-
worm/](http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm/)

~~~
BearOso
The reference to Swift at the bottom suggests this is satire.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Upon further investigation of the man's twitter and blog, I'd be inclined to
agree with you.

