posted 03-04-2008 01:07 PM            

Link

I suspect more the latter, but I am willing to be educated.

My understanding is that smallpox has no nonhuman reservoir. Is this true of malaria? It can live in mosquitos, but can't complete its life cycle without humans, right? Or are there other warm-blooded hosts that will do?

ed - tinyurled it

posted 03-04-2008 02:42 PM            

No, it is not stupid, and if Bill Gates is willing to put his billions behind it, I'll buy Windows crap till I kick the bucket.

Not so very long ago, like the 1950s, you could get malaria in some of Canada, most of the eastern US, and probably Siberia.

In the olden days, however, public health measures were directed toward actual health threats, not silly crap like ETS or your BMI, and people were willing to do what it took to eliminate the threat.

Koch's triad - disease agent (malaria), vector (mosquitos), and population (us) - describes that which is needed for a disease to propogate. Take away any one leg, and the disease goes away. For malaria, the leg was the vector. We drained swamps, and used DDT. Now swamps are protected "wetlands", and DDT prohibited.

So - can it be done - yes, if the econuts, WHO, UN, and other assorted moonbats stay out of the way. Do we collectively have the political will to say no the the moonbats - sadly, I doubt it.

Yore second question - malaria species are species specific - e.g., chicken malaria is different than human malaria, and not known to cross species. However, the point is, or rather would be, moot if the vector were taken out of the picture - no chicken malaria, no need to worry about crossing over.

<rant>"Tropical Disease" is one of the worst misnomers in the world, they are diseases, on the vast majority of cases, of poverty, and as long as they are allowed to persist, the poverty will persist. A classic case in point is the US south, or as it was formerly known, "THe Hookworm Belt". Part of the then relative backwardness and poverty in the south was related to a high prevence of hookworm and debilitation therefrom. SHoes and lartines - break the transmission cycle, the problem is gone. Any other transmissible disease is the same.</rant>

posted 03-04-2008 04:25 PM            

They used to get malaria in the Arctic.

Are the same kinds of solutions available in areas with monsoon rains, perpetual swamps and year long mosquito breeding?

posted 03-04-2008 05:13 PM            

The controls for malaria (draining swamps, DDT) will have to be maintained to eliminate the threat. It's unlikely that the vector could be exterminated, but the ability for the vector to reach the population could be elimnated.

posted 03-04-2008 06:10 PM            

Short answer, yes - think Florida, Louisiana, southern Georgia and Alabama, East Texas, and the Carolinas low country. Which segues to:

Dave,

See above, it is not necessary completly to eliminate one of the legs of Koch's triad, if you can, fine, but there is a critical level below which a given parasite/disease agent cannot survive because the density of vector or population is insufficient for it to propogate. Even now, Anopheles sp. are found all the US except for the Rocky Mountain states, and as far north as southern Canada, and the Canadian Pacific coast (according to the CDC - Buggo can correct me if I am off).

If the same principles and practices that worked for North America had been applied to Central and South America, malaria could have been eliminated from the Western Hemisphere by slowly expanding the disease free areas.