Save the Guinea Worm Foundation (Angelfire), Save the Guinea Worm Foundation: defending the world's most endangered species. (Deadlysins)
The Preservers (Angelfire), Save the Guinea Worm Foundation (Deadlysins):
I don't know if this is serious or a satire of protect-the-endangered-species environmentalism.
The guinea worm (Dracunculus mediensis) has been known for millennia in parts of Africa and Asia, and we and our ancestors may well have suffered from them for at least the last few million years. They are mentioned in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical treatise written around 1550 BCE. That document mentions the only known treatment, even after over 3500 years: slowly pull the worm out by winding it around a stick. Very slowly; it can take as long as a month. No cure or vaccine for it is known.
Guinea worms come in two separate sexes, with the female ones growing as much as 800 mm long and the male ones as much as 40 mm long. This is *very* long by nematode standards; most nematodes grow only a few mm long. However, the worms are about 1 - 2 mm wide.
In its larval stage, it infects copepods, like water fleas.
It passes on to its human host by that person drinking water containing infected copepods. As they are digested away, the worms wiggle through the gut and into the abdominal cavity. After three months, the worms mate and the male ones then die. About a year later, the surviving worms, all female, move to the lower legs, and they stick their tail ends through the skin, often at the hosts' feet. It makes a painful, burning sensation, and the worms' hosts often try to alleviate that pain by putting their legs and feet in some water. The worms then release some larvae, and the larval worms then look for some copepods to infect, completing the cycle.
The exit spot can get infected, adding to the pain, and this disease is painful enough to interfere with schooling and work for some months.
Though the guinea worm's preferred large host is our species, its close relatives prefer different species.
Back in 1986, the guinea worm produced an estimated 3.5 million new infections per year in 17 African countries, and also Yemen, Pakistan, and India. But eradication efforts by the Carter Center and other organizations have reduced this number drastically. They have concentrated on prevention, like filtering and boiling drinking water, and keeping infected people away from drinking-water supplies. As as result, there were only 126 reported infections in 2013. Also, the worm has not reappeared from any area that it has been eradicated from.
This suggests that the guinea worm is being driven into extinction, and that it will soon suffer the fate of the smallpox virus. That virus nowadays exists only in labs, though its genome has been sequenced. Likewise, the polio virus is almost eradicated, and it now exists in the wild only in a few African and Asian countries. However, civil wars and Islamist conspiracy mongers have interfered with that last bit of eradication.
There are several other organisms that are very troublesome to us but that are similarly vulnerable, not having any substitute for a human host for at least part of their life cycle. I'd mentioned the guinea worm, the smallpox virus, and the polio virus. We can add the AIDS virus, the herpes simplex virus, the human papilloma virus, the syphilis bacterium, the gonorrhea bacterium, the chlamydia bacterium, the head louse, the body louse, and the pubic louse.
That presents an interesting dilemma. But I think that it can be partially resolved by sequencing the species' genomes, thus giving the species an afterlife in gene-sequence databases.
The Preservers (Angelfire), Save the Guinea Worm Foundation (Deadlysins):
Quote:
The Preservers comprise an elite group of volunteers selected by the Foundation to assist in the protection of the Guinea Worm. Preservers back up their deeply-held beliefs on the importance of protecting the earth's most endangered species by offering their own bodies as hosts for Guinea Worms. By submitting to the physical discomfort that accompanies Guinea Worm infection, the Preservers hope to carry with them the seeds of future generations of Guinea Worms. |
I don't know if this is serious or a satire of protect-the-endangered-species environmentalism.
The guinea worm (Dracunculus mediensis) has been known for millennia in parts of Africa and Asia, and we and our ancestors may well have suffered from them for at least the last few million years. They are mentioned in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical treatise written around 1550 BCE. That document mentions the only known treatment, even after over 3500 years: slowly pull the worm out by winding it around a stick. Very slowly; it can take as long as a month. No cure or vaccine for it is known.
Guinea worms come in two separate sexes, with the female ones growing as much as 800 mm long and the male ones as much as 40 mm long. This is *very* long by nematode standards; most nematodes grow only a few mm long. However, the worms are about 1 - 2 mm wide.
In its larval stage, it infects copepods, like water fleas.
It passes on to its human host by that person drinking water containing infected copepods. As they are digested away, the worms wiggle through the gut and into the abdominal cavity. After three months, the worms mate and the male ones then die. About a year later, the surviving worms, all female, move to the lower legs, and they stick their tail ends through the skin, often at the hosts' feet. It makes a painful, burning sensation, and the worms' hosts often try to alleviate that pain by putting their legs and feet in some water. The worms then release some larvae, and the larval worms then look for some copepods to infect, completing the cycle.
The exit spot can get infected, adding to the pain, and this disease is painful enough to interfere with schooling and work for some months.
Though the guinea worm's preferred large host is our species, its close relatives prefer different species.
Back in 1986, the guinea worm produced an estimated 3.5 million new infections per year in 17 African countries, and also Yemen, Pakistan, and India. But eradication efforts by the Carter Center and other organizations have reduced this number drastically. They have concentrated on prevention, like filtering and boiling drinking water, and keeping infected people away from drinking-water supplies. As as result, there were only 126 reported infections in 2013. Also, the worm has not reappeared from any area that it has been eradicated from.
This suggests that the guinea worm is being driven into extinction, and that it will soon suffer the fate of the smallpox virus. That virus nowadays exists only in labs, though its genome has been sequenced. Likewise, the polio virus is almost eradicated, and it now exists in the wild only in a few African and Asian countries. However, civil wars and Islamist conspiracy mongers have interfered with that last bit of eradication.
There are several other organisms that are very troublesome to us but that are similarly vulnerable, not having any substitute for a human host for at least part of their life cycle. I'd mentioned the guinea worm, the smallpox virus, and the polio virus. We can add the AIDS virus, the herpes simplex virus, the human papilloma virus, the syphilis bacterium, the gonorrhea bacterium, the chlamydia bacterium, the head louse, the body louse, and the pubic louse.
That presents an interesting dilemma. But I think that it can be partially resolved by sequencing the species' genomes, thus giving the species an afterlife in gene-sequence databases.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1ANxQfn
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