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Comment by GauntletWizard | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone doing anything to save the endangered Guinea Worm? Do we have DNA sequences, freeze-dried and fossilized remains, chemical analysis? Have we tested the viability of reviving eggs after a few years frozen?

It's a terrible disease and I don't want anyone to ever get it again... but I'm something of a pessimist in terms of how eradicated we can make it, and believe there's probably still something to be learned from the methods by which it infects hosts - How it evades detection, stifles the body's immune system, or whatever. There is probably value in keeping a population around even once it's eliminated in the wild, for research and study... Though whether it's worth the time, effort, and risk is a question for epidemiologists, not me.

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People are responding to you snarkily, but there's real value in preserving every species that exists, including gain-of-function research (Assuming it isn't conducted by idiots, no malicious motivations in the people conducting the research, and isn't kept in secrecy). The worms may be symbiotically beneficial to humans in some unknown, complex way, or could possess unique biological processes/elements that could be of medical significance. Additionally, having their genetic information in a large database WILL provide useful general biological and evolutionary information.

> Assuming it isn't conducted by idiots, no malicious motivations in the people conducting the research, and isn't kept in secrecy

With those assumptions, many more things would be fine!

I read that when they took the last wild condors into captivity they thoughtlessly deloused them without any thought that their lice would be of any interest.

As a wise woman said:

> I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

It's a parasitic nematode, there are many of them. Just study the others. Looking at wikipedia, this one is quite similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguillicoloides_crassus but it infects eels instead of humans.

After many decades of study by a huge number of scientists, I suspect there is probably little left to be learned. It's probably more likely that keeping specimens around would lead to the development of biological weapons than anything else, I'd think. We surely have the genes sequenced, that's a very safe way to study the worm without risking the mishandling of a live specimen.

As a biological weapon, the Guinea worm leaves much to be desired.

Seems less risky than, say, keeping smallpox samples, or doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.

If you don't think it can be eradicated, actively preserving it seems pointless?

There are these guys: http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm

(I agree with you, I hope they froze some, or at least sequenced the DNA.)

This is the kind of thinking that brought the world to it's knees in 2020.

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