Future Medical Technology

[footfootfoot]

That makes sense to me. Aren't there a number of parasites and insects that inject some sort of enzyme or something that shuts off the host's immune response in order to create a more welcoming nest for itself?

[glatt]

Apparently the good (or bad?) thing about the pig whip worm is that since humans aren't its normal host, it can't survive for more than a couple weeks in our guts, so you gave to keep re-ingesting them. I guess that's good because you don't want them taking your body over, but it would be nice if you could get the treatment and then be done with it. But it looks like you need to be doing it forever.

Now might be a good time to get into the pig whip worm production business. You just have to figure out how to wash the eggs out of the manure and sterilize them efficiently.

[Clodfobble]

This has been floating around for awhile as a do-it-yourself non-FDA-sanctioned treatment for a number of autoimmune diseases. I know parents who buy them online and give them to their kids. I'm glad to see they might be able to get a prescription for it someday.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by glatt

Apparently the good (or bad?) thing about the pig whip worm is that since humans aren't its normal host, it can't survive for more than a couple weeks in our guts, so you gave to keep re-ingesting them. I guess that's good because you don't want them taking your body over, but it would be nice if you could get the treatment and then be done with it.

There's a chance that if this treatment is frequently used, we'll get a human-tolerant variant at some point.

Whether that will be good or bad is another question.

[ZenGum]

Hmmmm, good point. Life ..... finds a way... Put a gazillion pig whip worms into human guts, one of those worms is going to suddenly find it fits in.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

There's a chance that if this treatment is frequently used, we'll get a human-tolerant variant at some point.

Whether that will be good or bad is another question.

It all depends on whether Monsanto gets involved.

[Lamplighter]

Bill and Melinda Gates have been spending enormous sums of $ fighting malaria worldwide.
But...

There are reports of drug-resistant strains of malaria appearing in some villages
where treatment efforts had been sufficient to reduce the incidence of the disease.

But also, with some success in treatment also comes complacency.
Funding for the bed-nets has dropped so primary prevention will drop too.

Were I to be one to approve mega-funding for malaria, I'd look to the geneticists
who are developing the "one-size-fits-all" influenza vaccine containing
all of the various mutant genes that are in the flu genome.

In any case, I hope but doubt malaria will be "conquered" in the lifetime of any current generation.

[footfootfoot]

At the risk of sounding like a eugenicist, diseases play an important part in keeping a species strong. We are essentially breeding drug resistant bugs while making our own species generally weaker by allowing members who would otherwise have died to pass on their less vigorous genes.