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So i was watching about three minutes of a documentary where
crooked people were stealing the vaccines sent to africa, and other
crooked people were selling fake vaccines that did nothing. I have no
idea how often that happens, but any amount of that evilness seems
like too much.
But anyway,
If the medicines we give Africa never get to the people in
need, maybe we need a new distribution method, maybe we should
jam some up the snouts of those pesky mosquitoes, and then just drop
the mosquitoes out of planes? I figure rounding up and stealing vaccine
carrying mosquitos would be too difficult for anyone to try.
The new world screwworm in North Africa
http://www.fao.org/...U4220T/u4220T04.htm
[hippo, Jan 26 2009]
[link]
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:boggle:
Just how small does a syringe have to be to inoculate a mosquito anyway? |
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So the mosquitos bite and immunise the people? From the title, I thought you were immunising mosquitoes so they don't act as vectors. Does a malaria vaccine even exist yet? If it did, would it work in such tiny quanities? |
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Rounding them up would be useless, but suppose there were a surface filled with some fluid attractive to mosquitos, filled with a blood-like substance containing the vaccine. Now put them everywhere... |
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We should just kill all the mosquitos by clapping them between our hands. I can usually get one on the second or third try. |
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I can't proceed past the first word "So" - it doesn't seem to fit any context, and has no meaning in that position. What is it replying to? |
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The eradication of the New World Screw-worm fly from North Africa is interesting, and similar to this idea. This pest was likely to kill about 75% of North African livestock making several species extinct. The solution was to release vast numbers of sterile Screw-worm flies (These flies were bred specially and made sterile with radiation. They released 28 million per week). This meant that the likelihood of a 'wild' Screw-worm fly breeding with a non-sterile partner was low and the population gradually died out. (see link) |
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Some of the vaccines currently being developed aim to transmit the cure from a human through the mosquito to another human (a viral vaccine). |
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I thought of this idea both as a way of treating/curing
malaria, and as a way of reducing the spreading of it. |
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Now that I think about it, I dont know if it was a malaria
vaccine, or just a treatment medication.. but I still think the
idea has potential for putting cures or medications into the
mosquitoes though inoculating them or bioengineering
them, because it would save us having to medicate people
by hand, or having to choose who gets helped. |
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//something more like little protozoans// So much so that it _is_ little protozoans. That's also why it's difficult to treat with chemicals; being more closely related to us than are bacteria, its relatively similar biochemistry means most substances toxic to malaria parasites are also toxic to us. |
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Short of little nano-terminators that kill malaria protozoa, I imagine the most effective treatment would be what has worked best in the past in western civilizations: establishing cities that can be exterminated of mosquitoes effectively due to their size, protecting hundreds of people due to their density, and quarantining malaria victims so they may be treated (I suggest good old fashioned quinine, powerful stuff). |
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Mosquito nets (for sleeping); repellant and insecticide treatment or elimination of standing bodies of water are usually a good start to limiting exposure to potentially infected Anopheles mosquitoes. Given that there are almost 500 species of Anopheles it might be difficult to impose biological control methods on them. |
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[Voice] It's not easy to get anopheles mosquitos to blood-feed on anything but human. They don't even readily drink the blood of other mammals. A colleague of my honours supervisor used to feed them from his own forearms; apparently they can barely be felt, and leave no itching or bumps, because their salivary proteins have evolved to be compatable with human immune systems. |
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