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Robots and Irradiated Parasites Enlisted In the Fight Against Malaria
First time accepted submitter einar.petersen (1178307) writes "Sanaria is a biotechnology company that has developed a new malaria vaccine. To produce the vaccine Sanaria cultivates mosquitos in a sterile environment and infects them with Plasmodium falciparum. When the mosquitos are chock-full of Pf sporozoites, the company irradiates them to weaken the parasites. Workers then herd up the mosquitos, chop off their heads and squeeze out their salivary glands, where the parasites prefer to live the better to port over to the mosquito’s next victim. They retrieve the weakened parasites from these tiny glands, filter out other contaminants and gather them up into an injectable vaccine. Sanaria’s method faces the additional challenge that dissecting the little buggers is tedious. Researchers can dissect 2-3 mosquitos an hour, which is nowhere near enough to mass-produce a global vaccine. So two years ago, Sanaria began working with the Harvard Biorobotics Lab to develop a robot that could do the work faster."
This is exactly what happens when you raise the minimum wage. All the mosquito head chopping work gets automated.
Wow.
My wife just got malaria a few weeks ago while visiting Africa. She heard there was a vaccine in development, so I figured it was the usual weakened culture, but I had no idea it actually required dissecting mosquitoes.
I also didn't realize it was Plasmodium falciparum. This is pretty amazing, as not only is falciparum the most deadly species, but it's also the one that responds least to current treatments. If successful (and mass-producible), this could be like the polio vaccine. It'd be a huge advancement in the health of malaria-threatened countries.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Perhaps a decade from now, when the vaccine is available, the poor folks living in these areas can stop cursing at the western do-gooders who got DDT banned.
Yeah, then we can get back to putting lead in gasoline, and treating VD with arsenic.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I am interested in exactly how they cut off mosquito heads and empty the salivary glands.
It's very similar to the way they get mothballs.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.