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Fact-Based Fiction and Assumptions About Bacterial and Viral Immunity

2/4/2012

1 Comment

 

What If Our Assumptions About a Disease Are Wrong?

I've always loved reading fact-based fiction because I love learning new things. If I can be entertained while learning new things---all the better! Thus, I'm writing fiction based on current research and events and the age-old question, "What if?" What if one part of that research contained faulty data or analysis? What if one variable or the interaction of several variables had been overlooked? What if that current event had been held in a different setting? What if one person's agenda had been altered by a few seconds? What if our assumptions about our safety are wrong? 

Think about our assumptions concerning our health. We assume that many diseases confer immunity against ever contracting them again. But consider Dengue Fever. Even a severe case of Dengue Fever does not confer immunity; rather, the first exposure to Dengue Fever confers a weakened immunity against a second attack of the disease. It is the second, more serious illness that often kills. What if other diseases assumed to confer immunity, like malaria, actually do not confer immunity? 

Today's headlines report that a Lancet study discussed by Neil Bowdler, Science and Health reporter for the BBC News, concludes that  "Malaria Deaths Are Hugely Underestimated."  Immunity, or lack of assumed immunity, factors into this report: 

                        "Worldwide malaria deaths may be almost twice as high as previously 

                        estimated, a study reports. 
    
                        The research, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, suggests 

                        1.24 million people died from the mosquito-borne disease in 2010. This 
                        compares to a World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate for 2010 of 
                        655,000 deaths....The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates 
                        Foundation. It used new data and new computer modelling to build a 
                        historical database for malaria between 1980 and 2010. The conclusion 
                        was that worldwide deaths had risen from 995,000 in 1980 to a peak of 
                        1.82 million in 2004, before falling to 1.24 million in 2010. The rise in 
                        malaria deaths up to 2004 is attributed to a growth in populations at risk of 
                        malaria, while the decline since 2004 is attributed to "a rapid scaling up of 
                        malaria control in Africa", supported by international donors.

                        While most deaths were among young children and in Africa, the 

                        researchers noted a higher proportion of deaths among older children and 
                        adults than previously estimated. In total, 433,000 more deaths occurred 
                        among children over five and adults in 2010 than in the WHO estimate.

                        "You learn in medical school that people exposed to malaria as children 

                        develop immunity and rarely die from malaria as adults," said Dr Christopher 
                        Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study. "What 
                        we have found in hospital records, death records, surveys and other sources 
                        shows that just is not the case."

                        "Over the past decade, 230 million cases of malaria have been treated and 

                        the same number of bed nets have been distributed to people at risk of 
                        malaria, and the result of that has been this huge downturn. So what we know 
                        is that we're actually able to turn off malaria with our existing interventions."

1 Comment
Marie
2/13/2012 12:12:05 pm

Frightening thought!

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    Dr. Norene Moskalski can often be found walking the beaches of the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, collecting sea glass, weathered minerals, unusual shells, and artifacts from colonial shipwrecks. A naturalist and environmentalist by nature, and a medical diagnostician by avocation, she has a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and has held administrative and teaching positions at Penn State University and Temple University. She has spent most of her life preparing administrators and teachers to lead and teach ethically with love and respect for everyone. The settings for her novels are authentic vignettes from university campuses and places around the world she has visited. Each novel presents a variation on a theme, using literary techniques and musical innuendos to move the action forward. Her plots revolve around the unexpected: What if the most beautiful things in the world are the most dangerous?

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