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Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

Surely not.

There are those who feel sympathy for any living creature. There are those who espouse a non-human-centric philosophy of existence, some of whom view the elimination of other classes of organisms either neutrally or negatively. There are those who are hostile in varying degrees to the population afflicted by the guinea worm and who, disconnected from their suffering, are ambivalent about the cessation of that suffering.

Any individual in those groups might change their perspective if the guinea worm's menace were made more tangible to them — if they or those close to them were infected, or perhaps if they were to witness the suffering of the afflicted up close. But the range of human emotion and ideology is vast.

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I for one do not wish to have any such worm in my body, but eradication of whole species(in other words - genocide) raises some moral questions and also some other issues that have to be dealth in near future.

Apparently, in this case humans already are giving advantages to baboons and if they multiply too many - humans again will need to intervene to kill them to maintain their "normal" numbers.

The solution to the worm and other parasites is very simple - boil your water before using it. Swim only in pools that have been threated against parasites. Instead the offered solution is to sterilize all water in nature - in jungle environment, that is infested with life, that by nature is hostile to humans and others. I suppose, that the thinking of eradication of these worms comes from how they are dealing with malaria.

> Instead the offered solution is to sterilize all water in nature

This is not the treatment approach and is not remotely feasible.

The guinea worm life cycle is largely human driven as well. It's like objecting to reducing heavy metals leaching into drinking water out of some notion of keeping it unchanged from its current state, when it's largely put there by human behavior in the first place.

>>This is not the treatment approach and is not remotely feasible.

This is from article: "They then prevent people from drinking the contaminated water and use pesticides to disinfect it."

Basically they contaminate water with pesticides, which locals are drinking afterwards... there are no imminent effects from pesticides - that is for sure.

from wiki: D. medinensis larvae reside within small aquatic crustaceans called copepods.

>>The guinea worm life cycle is largely human driven as well.

Not true. It affects mammals, including humans. Infected mammals becomes easier catch for predators. It is part of cycle of life, which humans are disrupting.

The main issue here is that hygiene of people in Africa is still on the same level that Europeans had couple of centuries ago, when they used water from the same water sources where they had dead cats and fecal matter, only European sources of waters are getting "sterilized" by cold weather, unlike in Africa where those water inhabitants thrive all year. USSR had very similar issues with infections from drinking water, until it educated population that only boiled water is safe to drink. Judging from the article - that is still the main issue and part of what they are doing.

> Basically they contaminate water with pesticides, which locals are drinking afterwards... there are no imminent effects from pesticides - that is for sure.

You said:

> Instead the offered solution is to sterilize all water in nature

This article says in fourteen cases they've treated water, and pesticides that target water larvae aren't sterilizing.

>> The guinea worm life cycle is largely human driven as well.

> Not true. It affects mammals, including humans.

Until eradication efforts largely achieved their current success, absolutely this was true. And again, your original claim:

> Apparently, in this case humans already are giving advantages to baboons and if they multiply too many - humans again will need to intervene to kill them to maintain their "normal" numbers.

There have been 23 known baboon infections since the first one was found in 2013. Eliminating the guinea worm will have no effect on baboon populations.

> The main issue here is that hygiene of people in Africa...

I think I may see the problem here.

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