The New York Times ran a piece on distributing insecticide-treated nets for malaria today. It is an old story. There were long and tedious workshops on it at the last malaria conference I went to in Cameroon two years ago. I agree that bednets should be considered a social good, but it isn’t right to [...]
Newsweek’s short piece on malaria in Africa (September 24, 2007) is full of misinformation and mythology. For example, there has never been any continent-wide malaria control in Africa, as the lead sentence brazenly states; mosquitoes develop resistance to DDT by exposure to brand-name pesticides sold by Western chemical companies like BASF and others, not just [...]
I recently asked a bunch ofnurses at a NIH-funded malaria research clinic in Malawi where all thelocal malarial mosquitoes bred, and they answered in unison–“in theswamp.” Not so, said the mosquito biologist in the next building over.In fact the bugs that were killing their patients nursed their young inthe puddles right outside the hospital’s unscreened [...]
Tina Rosenberg’s long opinion piece in today’s New York Times brings much needed attention to the plight of “poor people’s diseases,” from sleeping sickness to tuberculosis (“The Scandal of ‘Poor People’s Diseases,’” New York Times, March 29, 2006). But her argument about malaria—that more DDT would vanquish the disease—is all wrong.
The basic gist of the [...]
To think that we could develop a man-made mosquito–our own super-mozzie– more adept than those in the wild, with their great diversity of habits and lifestyles greatly underestimates the wiliness of these dappled flies.
Stalked by pathogens, needed by no creature, these insects have neverthless thrived for over 100 million years, in almost every place where [...]
The news media is in a big kerfuffle over reports of a new geneticallymodified mosquito that is resistant to malaria, and all the strongerthan wild mosquitoes for it. Sounds perfect, right? Stronger bugs thatfight off the parasite would easily eclipse the local weaklings thatfall prey, and soon enough, there’d be no more malaria.
And yet…each malarial [...]
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Sonia Shah