World Mosquito Day – a Wellcome Perspective

Posted on August 21, 2013 by argylesock

argylesock says… I’m a day late with this reblog. How many more people have died of malaria in that day?

About argylesock

I wrote a PhD about veterinary parasitology so that's the starting point for this blog. But I'm now branching out into other areas of biology and into popular science writing. I'll write here about science that happens in landscapes, particularly farmland, and about science involving interspecific interactions. Datasets and statistics get my attention. Exactly where this blog will lead? That's a journey that I'm on and I hope you'll come with me.
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7 Responses to World Mosquito Day – a Wellcome Perspective

  1. EqFe says:
    August 21, 2013 at 9:19 am

    When I was in the Amazon, we slept comfortably under mosquito netting. So far they haven’t developed a way to bite through it. Hopefully the Gates Foundation and others will develop vaccines for Malaria, Dengue fever etc.

    Reply
    • argylesock says:
      August 21, 2013 at 9:24 am

      I know people who do that kind of science. Malaria research is never funded as much as research into, say, cancer or heart disease. I agree that effective vaccines against malaria and dengue could be wonderful. They’d need to be distributed to the people who need them. That might be an even bigger hurdle than funding the research.

      Reply
    • argylesock says:
      August 21, 2013 at 10:27 pm

      PS I forgot to mention vaccine resistance. Pathogens can evolve fast, so that last year’s vaccine becomes outdated.

      Reply
  2. Finn says:
    August 22, 2013 at 8:43 pm

    Interesting post Sam. Short of eradication of the Anopheles mosquito and/or Plasmodium falciparum will it ever be possible to protect everyone from malaria? Probably not – it’s not the way it’s meant to be, as you said, even a vaccine may become less effective. What then? Could we be force the parasite to mutate in a way that may enable it to utilise vectors other than Anopheles? Food for thought.

    Reply
    • argylesock says:
      August 22, 2013 at 9:06 pm

      I expect you’re familiar with the sterile male technique – releasing male mozzies that mate, but don’t fertilise. I hope to get around to researching that. If it’s as good as it sounds, this may be an example of when GM comes good. Or are the males sterilised in some other way? Irradiating them, perhaps.

      Reply

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