Malaria has been infecting and killing humans for many millennia, yet it continues to elude man’s efforts to control it. Sonia Shah‘s fascinating new book, The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, describes our long relationship with the disease:
These days, mosquitoes infect between 250 million and 500 million people with malaria every year, and close to 1 million perish. Equally shocking is the sheer length of malaria’s tenure upon us. Humans have suffered the disease for more than 500,000 years. And not only does it still plague us, but it has also become even more lethal. That’s quite a feat for a disease we’ve known how to prevent and cure for more than a hundred years. During that same time, we’ve vanquished any number of similarly once-commanding pathogens, from smallpox to the plague, and have come to expect nearly complete control over newer pathogens, such as SARS or avian flu….Yet despite the fact that we’ve known about malaria since ancient times, and have the drugs, killing chemicals, and know-how to avoid it, something about this disease still short-circuits our weaponry.
Shah explores the history of the disease and explains why malaria hasn’t “mellowed” with age (like other diseases have) and why humans haven’t adapted to the disease. She explains why our many efforts to conquer the disease — the drugs and DDT “spray-gun wars” of the 1950′s – have failed so miserably, and she offers the following, rather depressing conclusion:
No one can accuse us of lack of diligence in our devotion to the magic-bullet cure, the miracle drug, the wonder pill. And yet, though antimalarial drugs are ‘one of humanity’s most precious and cost-effective public health resources,’ as the nonprofit Medicines for Malaria Venture puts it, it’s useful to remember this: even if we somehow got our act together to unleash the full power of our antimalarial drugs upon the malaria parasite, we still wouldn’t win.
Humans, who often fail to comply with simple measures like sleeping under treated bed nets, don’t get a free pass either, in a comparison that will resonate with readers of SuperFreakonomics:
So while it’s true that sleeping under a treated net is simple and effective, it is so only in the same way that, say, physicians washing their hands before attending to their patients is simple and effective.
Shah has agreed to answer your questions about her new book, so fire away in the comments section and, as always, we’ll post her answers in due time.
Addendum: Shah answers your questions here.
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. You can also watch it on 
RE: Drill-Baby-Drill Drill Team
Why preface your question instead of just asking it?
With the help of Divine guidance, I have developed a powerful energy glyph that can kill bacteria and viruses. I would like a way to test this out on malaria. These energy glyphs can also be used to inhibit the growth of various insects. I have one that has completely resolved scale on plants and another that has resolved problems with aphids. Another has stopped the peach borers on my peach tree. I have not tested one for mosquitoes yet as I do not have that problem in my area but I have no doubt it can be done. Please see my website at http://www.holygroundfarm.org and click on book where I have a manual with 30 of these glyphs. I have many more glyphs available that can be a great benefit to all people.
I would like to add to my former post that I will gladly send these glyphs to anyone who is interested in helping to test them. If we work together we can do anything.
I contracted malaria three times over the course of a year despite scrupulous use of bed nets. The first bout resulted in 10-day hospital stay, while the second and third just required medication.
I realize that’s just my personal anecdote, but I think the Western fixation on “just use bed nets” is quixotic. Using a bed net every night in hot, humid tropical areas is uncomfortable at best – and then there is the fact that most people are not willing to sit under a bed net for 12 hours a day while mosquitoes are active. It’s also impossible for someone to tell if the bed net’s insecticide treatment, which is what makes it effective, is still potent or if it must be treated again.
So what is the alternative to bed nets?
Mosquitoes don’t bite me.
They hover without landing on my skin. I’ve seen a couple maybe bite me when I tried to let them land. In 66 years, I’ve maybe been bitten a dozen times, but I never get a welt.
Funny, but the exception was one night I spent in a free-swinging hammock without mosquito net in Rondônia, Brazil, smack dab in the Amazon Rainforest, among the most dangerous malaria regions in the world. I awoke with what I thought were 200 welts from bites, which rapidly went away.
Mosquitoes still bug the hell out of me with their buzzing and touching of the fine hairs on my skin.
It occurs to me that there’s a lot we don’t know about mosquitoes, their varieties and habits, and what conditions lead to malaria.
I’ve heard many stories about how the drugs to treat malaria can be just as bad or sometimes worse than malaria (This American Life had a segment on a man who suffered spontaneous amnesia from anti-malarials, and my SO has come in contact with anti-malarials while traveling). Why is this, and what can be done?
I’d like to second Brett’s question (#3) — to be more specific, are there stats on malaria prior to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, and after the subsequent efforts to ban DDT?
What is it about the mosquitos that carry malaria that prevents thier spread to temperate regions? What prevents temperate-region mosquitos from carrying or spreading malaria? Is there any danger of malaria eventually spreading to mosquito populations in climates like central Canada, where summers can be pretty miserable because of the mosquitos?