Think you have a great idea about how to solve a tough global health challenge? Round 4 of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations is now open, and anyone can apply. “One bold idea. That’s all it takes.”
Fresh out of bold ideas? Take some inspiration from a recent episode of WNYC’s Radiolab about Parasites. Radiolab hosts (get it? parasites…hosts…) Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich explore the pros and cons of hookworms. In the first part, Columbia professor Dickson Despommier puts the anemia-causing parasites on the hook for “southern laziness.” It’s an ode to the outhouse, the end of open defecation in the U.S., and the health benefits that followed.
Outhouse. Check. Already invented. But don’t despair. Every out-of-the-box idea usually just involves trying to prove the opposite of what we know to be true. Take the hookworm. That nasty little guy is all bad, right?
Jasper Lawrence didn’t think so. A few years ago, the allergy-ridden Englishman had enough of his allergies and asthma. So what did he do? You guessed it, he traveled to Africa for two weeks and walked barefoot in feces. No labs would sell him the goods, so he flew to Cameroon, found a village, and headed straight to the latrine (sans shoes). For two weeks he sought out the best that Cameroon had to offer. Surprise, he got hookworms. And according to him, he no longer has allergies.
Crazy? Maybe not. In 2004, David Pritchard, an immunologist-biologist at the University of Nottingham, infected himself with hookworms to test his theory about the link between allergies, parasites, and the immune system. As he explained it in this 2008 New York Times article:
‘The allergic response evolved to help expel parasites, and we think the worms have found a way of switching off the immune system in order to survive,’ he said. ‘That’s why infected people have fewer allergic symptoms.’
So what does a good scientist do with such an interesting idea? An experiment:
After Pritchard’s self-infection experiment, the National Health Services ethics committee let him conduct a study in 2006 with 30 participants, 15 of whom received 10 hookworms each. Tests showed that after six weeks, the T-cells of the 15 worm recipients began to produce lower levels of chemicals associated with inflammatory response, indicating that their immune systems were more suppressed than those of the 15 placebo recipients. Despite playing host to small numbers of parasites, worm recipients reported little discomfort.
In case you are wondering, the hookworm sweet-spot is about 10.
‘I gave myself 50 worms, and I felt it,” [Pritchard] recounted. “I had stomach pains and diarrhea. But with 10 worms, we’ve ascertained a dose that does not cause symptoms. The patients are happy. They’ve kept their worms, and I get an e-mail a day from people all over the world who want to be infected.’
OK, so there you go. Be bold.
In Hartsville we are now talking about municipal wireless and in some circles it may get the same response as Hookworms? But, I think your idea that there are solutions that just have to be imagined is one we need to hear more about. Thanks for moving that conversation forward. –