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Stopping Malaria By Immunizing Mosquitoes

Posted by Soulskill on from the will-they-get-a-public-option dept.

RedEaredSlider writes "Millions of people in the tropics suffer from malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that has been difficult to treat and which costs many developing countries millions of dollars per year in lost productivity. Up to now, efforts at controlling it have focused on attacking the parasites that cause it, keeping mosquitoes from biting, or killing the insects. But at Johns Hopkins University, Rhoel Dinglasan, an entomologist and biologist, decided to try another tack: immunizing mosquitoes. When a mosquito bites an infected human, it takes up some of the gametocytes. They aren't dangerous to people at that stage. Since plasmodium is vulnerable there, that is the point Dinglasan chose to attack. A mosquito's gut has certain receptor molecules in it that the plasmodium can bind to. Dinglasan asked what would happen if the parasite couldn't 'see' them, which would happen if another molecule, some antigen, were binding to those receptors."

7 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. good luck with that by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    they're gonna need, if they want to give malaria shots to all mosquitos all there.

    talk about a steady hand and LOTS of pacience.

    --
    What ? Me, worry ?
    1. Re:good luck with that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Immunizing mosquitoes would be more "lots of patients"

  2. Wow by Lucas123 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just imagine the size of the needles...

  3. There will be resistance to this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Many mosquitoes believe immunizations cause autism.

  4. It wont work. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2, Funny

    That girl, who is she, Jenny McCarthy or Jen Aniston or whoever, will protest that these immunizations create autism in mosquitoes and the idiotic press will cover it wall to wall and the mosquitoes will get scared and none of them will show up to take the immunization shots.

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. Re:Wait so... by khallow · · Score: 2, Funny

    Around here we call a thousand million something different, it's a billion.

    That's probably because he's from the UK. They shipped all the crazy people to the States and the crooks to Australia. Now there's nobody interesting left.

  6. Re:Population control Nazis by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ahh, you can tell it's halloween, the ghost stories are coming out. For example, here we have the tale of the frightening "radical environmentalist" who, apparently, wants to control the population through... like... protecting the environment and shit.

    Are you next going to regale us with the tale of the evil illegal immigrant nefariously TAKING YER JERBS?