You may have seen reports today that pharmaceutical companies are creating diseases to increase their profit margins. Let me assure you that this does not apply to parasitic infections, which are very difficult to create unless you are a qualified Class I certified Creator of Many Eons experience. They are bona fide diseases that cause an immense amount of ill health and mortality across the globe, mainly in developing countries (unless you are a sheep, in which case it doesn't matter where you live).
Pharmaceutical companies are disinclined to develop drugs against existing parasitic diseases despite the fact that they (the parasites) do, in fact, exist. This is because the cost of development and testing will never be recouperated. Take the trematode parasite known as schistosomiasis, or Bilharzia (after the chap who discovered it, Theodore Bilharz). This ancient disease is treated these days with just one drug, and no other compound is under commercial development. This is never a satisfactory situation due to the possibility of drug resistance eventually emerging - something that stymies the effectivness of just about every anti-malarial ever developed (quinine is still quite effective due to its restricted use). Incidentally, there is much more interest academically in the development of anti-malarial therapy, including within the US military who have lost many personnel to this deadly protozoan.
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11 comments:
Are you saying that if I have a mosquito problem, I should just drink gin (or vodka) and tonics, and the quinine in the tonic will keep them from my door?
I expect alcohol works better with fleas than mosquitoes and other bite-and-run merchants.
It certainly works on me.
I suggest if you have a mosquito problem that you pay special attention to the state of your feet. If they are somewhat sweaty the mossies will lick their tiny lips and head straight for your ankles. I would also stop living near a swamp
That's what my case manager told me the other day, but by swamp she meant 'the country'. And it can't be my feet. I never remove my shoes.
So amputation is a potential public health measure if people's circumstances are such that they cannot move away from swamps?
Or remove their shoes?
As an underage drinker in Stornoway we used to go to the Castle Grounds to drink. We used to get drunk ('cos that was the point and we may have been young, shiny-cheeked wastrels but we were also motivated, goal-orientated and on top of our game) and our secondary aim was to get the midges, which were drinking our blood drunk too. There are now generations of midges in the Castle Grounds who suffer disproportionately from liver disease and diabetes and will the government help them with this plague wrought on them by the white man? Bloody no!
Sam, I think I might have come across some of these midges. The lack of government help has sent them underground. They are disadvantaged, disillusioned and aggrieved. Cut off from mainstream midge society, they take out their frustrations on the human population, seeking out the vulnerable and launching attacks of such ferocity that old people are afraid to leave their caravans. And you claim to be the reason for this epidemic do you?
Is the midge society more underground than the Mozzie society? I never understood the standing of a midge unless it was in an archie comic...
Legend has it that the midges were sent north by an ancient Lord Midge. They were told that Scotland contained savages who had not yet learned the art of applying insect repellant. I cannot vouch for this story.
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