New Vaccine Halves Malaria Risk 147
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report in Reuters, scientists are celebrating the end of a clinical trial which found a malaria vaccine reduces infection risk by half in children. From the article: 'While scientists say it is no "silver bullet" and will not end the mosquito-borne infection on its own, it is being hailed as a crucial weapon in the fight against malaria and one that could speed the path to eventual worldwide eradication. Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It kills more than 780,000 people per year, most of them babies or very young children in Africa. Cohen's vaccine goes to work at the point when the parasite enters the human bloodstream after a mosquito bite. By stimulating an immune response, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. ... Cohen said that if all goes to plan, RTS,S could be licensed and rolled out by 2015.'"
Malaria seems to be adaptable (Score:1)
...so will this vaccine and others become useless in a few years, as malaria seems to have become resistant to other treatments over the years?
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Vaccines != antibiotics.
Vaccines != Antibiotics (Score:1)
True but vaccines train the body to recognise markers so one presumes that a strain of malaria may arise without the markers that are recognised.
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True but vaccines train the body to recognise markers so one presumes that a strain of malaria may arise without the markers that are recognised.
Possibly, the big achievement is find anything to target. malarias coat proteins are highly polymorphic to better avoid the immune system and all the stable stuff is hidden under the coat protein.
If a resistant strain does become prevalent it should be possible to create a vaccine against that
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True but vaccines train the body to recognise markers so one presumes that a strain of malaria may arise without the markers that are recognised.
Possibly, the big achievement is find anything to target. malarias coat proteins are highly polymorphic to better avoid the immune system and all the stable stuff is hidden under the coat protein.
If a resistant strain does become prevalent it should be possible to create a vaccine against that targeting the same protein.
Re:Malaria seems to be adaptable (Score:4, Interesting)
Malaria has been effective at developing resistance to treatments over the years and could also be effective at evading the vaccine.
Not a silver bullet... (Score:2)
"Licensed and Rolled Out" (Score:2)
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The company has previously said it would charge only the cost of manufacturing it plus a 5 percent mark-up, which would be reinvested into tropical disease research. "We are not going to make any money from this project," Witty said.
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The governments of the nations that need it the most didn't do or pay for the research and tend to not have the money for it.
Funny but odds are that Bill Gates will pay a large amount of the cost. Makes me want to forgive him for AmigaBasic being full of bugs, all those years of DOS and Windows, and even Windows ME. I will bet you the license will cost next to nothing for any company in those nations.
Oh and here is a concept that is catching on for a few millennia, Charity "http://path.org/donate/index.php"
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Funny but Bill "The Borg" Gates made all that money from a soulless corporation. IMHO he found is humanity when he became a father. That does seem to happen a lot from my observation.
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There's this concept call "thinking" that has been catching on. You ought to try it sometime. Contrary to your moronic statement, governments do not spend money on things "for the greater good of humanity". They spend money on things that are good for their nation. How much money do you think that the countries affected by malaria have to spend on developing a vaccine for malaria?
If only there were some sort of organized union of nations that each paid towards operating costs in order to work on world issues of security, health and economic development.
Child vaccine (Score:1)
Re:Child vaccine (Score:5, Informative)
One of the Gates Foundation biggest health initiatives is family planning [gatesfoundation.org].
Seriously, they get it. Enough that they are drawing the ire [jesus-is-savior.com] of certain other groups, for what it's worth.
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VOLUNTARY family planning. When has that EVER worked in a poor heavily Catholic or Muslim country?
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Africa needs an effective vaccine against babies more than a vaccine against mosquitoes.
The two are related; people have more babies when they are aware that many of their offspring may not survive till adulthood. They will generally have less if the chances that their children will survive are greater.
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Incredible Result (Score:4, Insightful)
And as for all of the "Won't this lead to overpopulation" comments, I think it will do the opposite. Birth rates in malaria areas are very high in part because of the poverty and lack of education in those areas. Those areas are poor in part because of malaria and its ability to ravage families. There may be an initial population spike from this vaccine, but time and again we have seen that increasing the standard of living lowers the birth rate. The best way to control overpopulation is to reduce poverty and educate people (specifically women). This vaccine goes a long way to doing both.
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So which lowers birth rates, increased economic standards of living or relief from the disease pressure of malaria? I also don't see where preventing malaria increases education, women's or anyone else's, or reduces poverty by any direct means.
I think this is great for people who live in malarial areas as a means to reduce misery, but I think there's a lot of weak conclusions drawn about the larger impact of reducing malaria, especially in the face of endemic poverty, political instability, political repre
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Well, for one, a huge amount of resources now are spent by humanitarian organizations in treating and fighting malaria. If this puts a significant dent in that, some of the expense and effort put into fighting malaria can be used for education, training, building infrastructure, etc.
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You're a school age child, particularly a girl. Your family is better off than some, and you have a chance to go to school. Someone in your family gets sick. Now you either have to stay home and care for him or her, or you have to stay home and do his job. Perhaps he recovers, perhaps he doesn't. Either way, you're probably not going back to school.
Maybe it's you that's sick. Same effect. Malaria doesn't just kill instantly, it makes you sick for an extended period of time. If you recover you often
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Children with malaria don't go to school. Siblings of children with malaria stay home and take care of their siblings. And if one of the parents gets malaria?
There is a very real loss of education and economic growth here, not to mention all
very good points
The European Union could learn from this (Score:2)
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Huh? Is malaria infection a big problem with European cattle? Is there some other disease ravaging European cattle herds that could easily be prevented with a vaccine that isn't used?
I don't quite understand what point you are trying to get across. Could you clarify?
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Huh? Is malaria infection a big problem with European cattle? Is there some other disease ravaging European cattle herds that could easily be prevented with a vaccine that isn't used?
I don't quite understand what point you are trying to get across. Could you clarify?
Not malaria, but diseases like Q-fever and pig plague/swine fever do have vaccins. For some reason they don't want to vaccinate, and thus they kill the complete stock. I believe using the vaccine results in not being able to get a clear picture of the disease, where is spreads, if it stops, etc.
Africans immune to malaria (Score:3)
I was going to say, aren't Africans immune to malaria? But wiki [wikipedia.org] sayeth: apparently only a third of sub-Saharan Africans are immune to malaria.
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>Where on earth would you get the idea that Africans were immune?
Am I missing something? The reference is right there in the post you responded to.
I thought it was well known that Africans who have sick-cell anemia have the upside of being immune to malaria. What I didn't know is that not all Africans have this immunity, which I luckily checked before posting.
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Perhaps you are missing that your comment demonstrated an astounding combination of ignorance and lack of reading comprehension. Sickle cell TRAIT (heterozygotes) makes you resistant, not immune, to malaria. Sickle cell anemia (homozygotes) makes you die early (and generally have a painful and debilitating life before that without treatment). Says so right in the article you linked to. And to not know that nearly a million Africans are dying from malaria each year is remarkable.
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Health Care in Emerging Markets (Score:5, Interesting)
Will it work in mosquitos? (Score:2)
Unlikely, but, would it be possible to design it in a way that it works in mosquitoes as well? (So, that the mosquito might possibly get the antibodies as well?)
If oral vaccination works for polio in humans - would it be possible to design an oral vaccination that might help eradicate the Malaria pathogens in mosquitoes? (i.e. can we 'cure' the mosquitoes before they bite us again?)
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Dear anonymous coward: Am I really an idiot for asking whether something is being researched?
If there are pathogens that can jump species - like bird flu - why should it be impossible to make the opposite work, a vaccine that can jump species?
Look at the various plans that are being discussed in different places:
- vaccination of humans - doesn't solve the problem in the long term, as it would require constant re-vaccination of new generations of children.
- there's Myrvold's mosquito-zapping
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can we 'cure' the mosquitoes before they bite us again?
We can introduce male mosquito genetically altered to have glow in the dark genes. This would help to eradicate the species of mosquito that caries malaria.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/gm-mosquito.htm [howstuffworks.com]
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There has been some work on vaccinating mosquitos. It was posted on Slashdot a few years ago.
What's the hold up? (Score:2)
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It's a really horrible question to have to ask... (Score:2)
I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
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I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
If a woman gives birth to a child that dies, that's a big waste of human energy. Having to give birth just three times (in a lifetime) instead of five (as an example) means more time and energy for work and earning money. Plus think of the grief of the loss of those children, that has a big impact on your life, another waste of energy, even if it's quite common in Africa.
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I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
If a woman gives birth to a child that dies, that's a big waste of human energy. Having to give birth just three times (in a lifetime) instead of five (as an example) means more time and energy for work and earning money. Plus think of the grief of the loss of those children, that has a big impact on your life, another waste of energy, even if it's quite common in Africa.
Plus, there are not more children born, probably only less children die. There might be a spike in the first few years however.
not necessarily (Score:2)
Will a successful vaccine create new problems? (Score:3)
If this really works and is widely deployed then governments need to figure out how to clothe, feed, educate, and find jobs for the the increased population. If not the increase of disadvantaged persons will probably breed civil unrest and war.
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We could just nuke them from orbit.
Malaria doesn't just kill you right there and then. It can produce a life time of sickness. Victims of Malaria can now work as hard as healthy people. Cutting the number of not just deaths but infections will free up resources that got to treatment now plus create new resources of healthy people to feed, educate, and clothe those nations. Hopefully. The problem will still be those "groups" of armed idiots and corrupt governments.
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You do know that is an equally good argument to ban abortion and birth control. Just saying that it isn't a great argument in the form you presented.
MALARIA CURE DISCOVERED!!! (Score:1)
Pliny knew you could cure malaria by drinking tea made from olive leaf. It is not an accident that 75% of all medications are derived or synthesized from natural sources.
Dont take vaccines! (Score:1)
Vacines give you #$%#$% terrets! Syn#$%$#drom!
dont take them, im not even #$%# playin.
Half is bad (Score:2)
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It's not an antibiotic.
Partial study results (Score:2)
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About a million people die each year from Malaria. That's a drop in the ocean compared to the net increase in humans. Nothing short of massive cultural shifts in large swathes of the world will halt global population problems.
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If gates REALLY wanted to solve humanities ills, then he would focus on doing large numbers of INNOVATIVE start-ups all over the world. In return, he would require a number of sm
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It will not. Ppl as a whole, do what brings them pleasure. When you do not have a job or money, then you spend your time focused on roughly one thing: sex. Now, when nations are controlled by roman catholics, islam, mormons, etc, or you have idiots like reagan and W that say no money to BC, well, you end up with a high birth rate.
Though only a few would seriously have the ten kids they'd have if they just kept fucking and fucking with no birth control. So in practice the disconnect between having sex and having kids has already happened. The only battleground is where this not-for-reproduction sex happens. Most that practically deal with teenagers have quietly added "but if you do anyway use protection so you don't get pregnant or catch an STD" in additon to the puritan bullshit.
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Nice ad hominem from a coward.
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My boss's boss worked for reagan. I seriously doubt that you had anything to do with reagan or know even a fraction of what transpired under him. reagan DID attack BC. In fact, reagan did a lot of things that so few realize.
Care to cite something he did that was anti-BC?
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Good or bad that babies (somewhere else, conveniently) are dying? Is that the question? Fuck you.
(I wish I thought this guy was a troll.)
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The reason they have so many kids is because infant mortality is so high. They have to have six kids just to make sure that one of them survives to adulthood.
We've seen in other countries that as quality of life improves, birth rate drops. This is a solid first step towards improving the quality of life.
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Exactly there is actually a problem in some "First World Countries" that their population is dropping. Because their lives are not so filled with death, they feel they have the time to wait to have a child when it is the most convent or not at all, and limit their children to 1 or 2.
Of course there is this funny concept that these countries at the same time complain both about their population from birth dropping being a bad thing, and the population influx from immigrants being a bad thing as well.
I gue
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A hundred years ago, people feared that the US would become a Catholic nation with the influx of immigrants from Ireland and Southern Europe. Today, we don't really care if someone is Irish or Italian or whathaveyou. A hundred years from now, no-one will care if you have slightly darker skin. Hopefully they won't care about your skin color at all.
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If half of the parasite population survives, won't selection quickly favour the resistant part of the population?
If it were an antibiotic and not a vaccine, you'd be right.
With a vaccine, you're encouraging the child's immune system to combat malaria. If the half that the vaccine doesn't work for die before procreation then overtime the vaccine would become more effective (assuming that why the vaccine works for some and not for others is genetic based).
Re:Poverty is the REAL issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a man who dedicates half his fortune to curing a major cause of death in the third world to establish his good name really any worse than the man who does same for purely altruistic reasons? The money's the same, after all.
It's a damn sight easier to eliminate a disease than to eliminate poverty. If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
Re:Poverty is the REAL issue (Score:4, Insightful)
If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
Africa already has the highest population growth. A successful economy needs more then that just people.
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Re:Poverty is the REAL issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Employment rates in Africa are terrible. The problem is not a shortage of workforce.
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Quite right. It needs healthy people.
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"More bodies available to work" is the problem, it depresses the average wage. In a time of famine, do you really want more people?
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Gates Foundation is selfserving (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Do some research on how they invest their funds; the corporations where they hold their monies; the entire charity is a tax shelter, a self-serving monument to one man's ego. If this drug were truly revolutionary, it would be released for free and made available to the generic drug makers.
If it was released for free, you'd just come back and say they'd charge for it if it was worth anything.
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Haha adding people to starving African nations will most definitely not make their problems go away.
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Having people to work the farms and factories to make money could, though.
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If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
Following the end of the Chinese Civil war, this was Mao's stance on population growth -- that people were a resource, so they should encourage lots of population growth. This stance (combined with social and economic mis-management) resulted in the famines that contributed to China's current restrictive policies.
Similarly, Romania's Ceausescu had a similar stance, which produced chaos instead of the expected benefits. So while it's true that people are an economic resource, there is a fine balance betwee
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Is a man who dedicates half his fortune to curing a major cause of death in the third world to establish his good name really any worse than the man who does same for purely altruistic reasons? The money's the same, after all.
It is no worse. It is just as bad. Isn't that reason enough? And no, there is no "altruism" involved. That implies some sense of compassion. It is just a standard foundation tax dodge to hide the money so that when he dies to pass the money on to his kids it can't be taxed. And yes I have a friend who married a trust fund baby who's family did this very thing.
It's a damn sight easier to eliminate a disease than to eliminate poverty. If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
You are assuming a 1st world economy where food is plentiful and jobs are based on services. Without enough good farmland, money to produce mor
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Really? You're looking to slam Gates so much that you're willing to overlook his over $28 billion in charitable contributions because the company he founded stands to make some cash off selling computers to them? I'm willing to bet that, even optimally, Gates won't make back a tenth of that as a result of this. Not everything has an ulterior motive.
Re:Do some research (Score:4, Insightful)
You're an idiot. Which is better? A foundation that invests in things that make money, and can therefore give the profits of those investments to charities for an extended period of time (forever, if the investments are good), or a foundation that gives away all it's worth at once?
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No matter what you do with ill gotten gains, it does not remove the original crime/sin.
Gates already has a good name (Score:5, Insightful)
Some times the pathetic attitude of people here really disappoints me.
Even with his billions he can't lift the world out of recession, he has the same hamstring everyone does, government. How do you propose solving government induced poverty? Spend his billions trying to overthrow petty tyrants? How do you expect him to sort out which start ups have a possibility at success let alone are not scams or will simply succumb to the corrupt governments of the countries they are in?
You seem to ascribe a lot of guilt to one man who actually is trying do good. Did you ever consider that he has evaluated his options and is taking the choice that provides the best bang for the buck?
What are you doing, please don't say that since you don't have X amount of money you cannot help.
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Well I'm over 35, have met him, and don't think he's an asshole. I'd hang out with him over Steve Jobs (RIP) any day. His egocentricity does not approach that of what Jobs was. He is giving away his money. He already has. You appear to not like how he's using it, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he's giving away hundreds of millions to different research groups and charities.
Re:Gates already has a good name (Score:4, Insightful)
It is HIS money. He can spend it the way that he sees fit. HOWEVER, just as America's efforts on Africa for the last 60 years have hardly paid off. We never solved the real issue which is POVERTY. We gave them free food which in turn, took local farmers out of work. How can you compete with FREE food? YOu can not. Gate's solution is the same way. he will solve one problem, but it will only increase the other issues: population increases without monetary increases.
The only workable solution is to help them start businesses and build up infrastructures such as hospitals and schools. Mostly schools.
Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, you feed him and his kin for life. If nothing else, look at how much good we did in Europe, Japan, and south korea with marshal plan and then later in China with our current stuff. Europe was brought back to life after being devasted in WWII by working closely with them. By the 70's, they Europe, japan were on their feet. SK has come into their own over the last 2 decades.
China is a different issue. We sought to do the same, but Chinese leaders are in a cold war with the west, which is why we are going to have to do something soon. The best thing that we can do with Africa and South America is help them expand economically.
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Gate's solution is the same way. he will solve one problem, but it will only increase the other issues: population increases without monetary increases.
Sheesh. You'd think the guy was pissing on your lawn. Has it ever occurred to you that death (especially childhood death) is extremely costly? Costly emotionally, costly financially, costly economically, and costly spiritually. In many of these poor countries a couple has to have many children to guarantee a couple of them survive to adulthood. Having t
Re:Poverty is the REAL issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, he spends money now on curing human SYMPTOMS, while ignoring the main issue that really needs to worked on: poverty.
You would make a really shitty triage doctor. When a patient is laying on the gurney with a gunshot wound, you don't throw your hands up and say "Well, until I can treat the underlying problem of gang violence that got him here, fuck it." Helping end disease in Africa will mean a major improvement in lives there. Would it be nice to ALSO end poverty? You betcha. But when you have limited resources, you don't START with the hardest and most intractable problems, you start out with the smaller problems that you can actually SOLVE with those limited resources.
Even a Bill Gates, with his vast individual wealth, couldn't even begin to deal with the issue of poverty in Africa. That would take a coalition of dozens (if not hundreds) of governments willing to pool their resources and work together. And even then it would be a HUGE challenge.
What's REALLY sad that people on /. can't look past their mindless hatred of Bill Gates to acknowledge the real good he's doing in Africa. The bizarre thing is that some of these same people are the ones who cried like their daddy had died when Steve Jobs died--a man who lined his own pockets with billions while never doing ANYTHING to help the sick and impoverished. Not one fucking THING have you or your idol done for the poor in Africa, yet all you can do is criticize Bill Gates, one of the few who is actually getting off his ass and doing something to help.
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When you solve malaria, you will now cut the death rate. That will put pressure on the local community. LOADS of it. Right now, the reason why Malaria spread so quickly and easily is because mosquitoes carry it from one person to another. They are right next to each other. Once malaria is cure
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Beyond that, what leaps of logic did I make?
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Re:Poverty is the REAL issue (Score:5, Informative)
When you solve malaria, you will now cut the death rate. That will put pressure on the local community. LOADS of it. Right now, the reason why Malaria spread so quickly and easily is because mosquitoes carry it from one person to another. They are right next to each other. Once malaria is cured, then another disease will step right up there because more ppl will occupy the same space, but with the same amount of money to solve issues. Actually less overall as well as less per person. Once it is realized by gates that he screwed up, he will not want to solve the next symptom..
I don't think you understand the drain on resources that malaria is. While many do die from malaria, most do not. Most are just chronically sick, and unless you are going to advocate shooting them in the head, these current chronically sick people are a much bigger drain on the entire social structure than the increased costs associated with fewer deaths due to malaria.
Have a read:
http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/363/RBMInfosheet_10.htm [who.int]
"Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has historically been lower than in countries without malaria. Economists believe that malaria is responsible for a ‘growth penalty' of up to 1.3% per year in some African countries. When compounded over the years, this penalty leads to substantial differences in GDP between countries with and without malaria and severely restrains the economic growth of the entire region.
The direct costs of malaria include a combination of personal and public expenditures on both prevention and treatment of the disease. Personal expenditures include individual or family spending on insecticide treated mosquito nets (ITNs), doctors' fees, anti-malarial drugs, transport to health facilities, support for the patient and sometimes an accompanying family member during hospital stays. Public expenditures include spending by government on maintaining health facilities and health care infrastructure, publicly managed vector control, education and research. In some countries with a heavy malaria burden, the disease may account for as much as 40% of public health expenditure, 30-50% of inpatient admissions, and up to 50% of outpatient visits.
The indirect costs of malaria include lost productivity or income associated with illness or death. This might be expressed as the cost of lost workdays or absenteeism from formal employment and the value of unpaid work done in the home by both men and women. In the case of death, the indirect cost includes the discounted future lifetime earnings of those who die.
Malaria has a greater impact on Africa's human resources than simple lost earnings. Although difficult to express in dollar terms, another indirect cost of malaria is the human pain and suffering caused by the disease. Malaria also hampers children's schooling and social development through both absenteeism and permanent neurological and other damage associated with severe episodes of the disease.
The simple presence of malaria in a community or country also hampers individual and national prosperity due to its influence on social and economic decisions. The risk of contracting malaria in endemic areas can deter investment, both internal and external and affect individual and household decision making in many ways that have a negative impact on economic productivity and growth."
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Nope, just China.
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Malaria is a major killer of ppl.
Actually, it is a major killer of children. Gates foundation is not draining the U.S. coffers in their attempt to ease the pain and suffering of those children. Bill and Melinda Gates contribution and construction of the foundation is not a blank check to the foundation. Donations have been, and are still being, accepted from global contributers. China's money is not the U.S.'s money. Money spent on China's goods is gone. It belongs to China. If they wish to help chil
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Africa would get a good lift up if the Europeans and Americans paid reparations for the damage done under the colonial conquest of the continent and the slave trade. Despite being mostly a tax evading scheme, I will recognize Gates that at least him is doing it in a far bigger scale than what would be recommended by his accountants and enough to do a palpable good. Here in Mexico, our billionaires are 150% assholes.
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Poverty is a complex, multicausal phenomena, as any sociologist, statistician, or demographer can tell you, and should be analyzed with a systemic perspective. Malaria, as any other health issue, is an indicator of poverty, but also a cause of poverty. That's why we build indicators like "Disability-adjusted life year", "Year-Life Loss", and "Healthy Life Years": they are useful as health indicators and as proxies for economic potential. A purely economic solution for economic problems, which is what you em
healthy kids may cut poverty (Score:2)
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You're an idiot. The things that slow down population growth are education and women's rights. Leaving disease intact just means you have a large, poor, diseased population that has even more trouble educating itself.