Welcome to the Website of Alan Walker, Science Writer

This site is about asking questions of how physical nature works and how that may lead to making useful things.

Strange but true.

Malaria used to afflict people in Arkhangelsk, northern Russia. It used to plague the eastern and southern states of the USA until people eliminated it there. The mosquito species that transmitted the parasite causing malaria in England can still be found within one hour’s drive from the City of London.

What happened to malaria?

This type of malaria, the kind known as vivax, was widespread in the world until human activities made life difficult for it. Agricultural improvement, better housing, drainage of marshes where the mosquitoes thrive, and deliberate control using drugs and insecticides, drove out vivax malaria from many of its former strongholds.

But it still causes a huge problem!

Another kind of malaria, called falciparum, remains in much of the humid tropics, specially in Africa where it kills about one million people every year. An attempt to eradicate malaria was made by the World Health Organisation starting in the mid 1950s, but by the late 1960s the chemicals used became less effective as the mosquitoes evolved resistance to them.

Get rid malaria by vaccination?

Bill and Melinda Gates, speaking for their Foundation, freshly promote eradication. One method is a vaccine against the parasites that cause it. Researchers are testing the vaccine in Africa, approaching the process of registration for use. That means it will have good effect in reducing malaria, but what will it take to eradicate malaria? What if the malaria parasites acquire resistance against the vaccine, as did mosquitoes against chemicals?

Evasive parasites.

The malaria parasites already are resistant to the effects of the vaccine. They became so over several million years. During that time we and the parasite have been in a macabre dance. Our immune system devises a defence like antibody: the parasite counters with a coat of endless colours to avoid antibody. Immunity provides white blood cells that seek and devour the parasites: the parasites counter by hiding inside red blood cells which the white cells are forbidden to attack. And so it goes, like the Red Queen of the ‘Through the looking glass . . . ' story, who had to keep running faster just to stay in one place.

Red Queen Effect versus Technical Fix.

A branch of biology has grown up around this type of contrariness in nature. The new understanding puts the business of eradicating diseases in a new light. The new vaccine against malaria works well enough to register and manufacture it, but the people who need it most cannot afford it. They need it most because malaria derives ecologically from poverty. So the technical fix of a vaccine is expected to work in the social realm of the economics and politics of poverty. How feasible is this?

I explore this and similar questions in my current writing project. See Work in Progress.

(Photos courtesy of Centers for Disease Control, US Government. Anopheles mosquito and Plasmodium in red blood cells)