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Remember the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

That was a study that went on about 30 years in the 20th century among poor black men in the south to see what happened when syphilis went untreated while they were receiving "free" health care.

"The United States Public Health Service, in trying to learn more about syphilis and justify treatment programs for blacks, withheld adequate treatment from a group of poor black men who had the disease, causing needless pain and suffering for the men and their loved ones.

In the wake of the Tuskegee Study and other studies, the federal government took a closer look at research involving human subjects and made changes to prevent the moral breaches that occurred in Tuskegee from happening again."[CDC]

In my non-medical opinion, we're doing the same thing to black children in Africa under the guise of malaria research. I was absolutely sickened by the latest issue of JAMA (May 23/30, 2007, Vol. 297, No.20), which is entirely about malaria testing of combination drug therapy primarily on children of Afghanistan, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, and Ghana. I don't understand all the big words, but I do know that while "healthy" children with high parasite loads were receiving short term medications, they weren't receiving insecticide treated bed nets, currently one of the more effective methods to combat malaria since do-gooder environmentalists inspired by Rachel Carson got DDT removed from the market in the 1970s.

I can also read the treatment outcomes--yes, no one died (oh goodie), but the side effects were observed (remember these are children!) which included anorexia, coughs, weakness, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, pruitus, seizures.

"The overall health of the children in this cohort was excellent. There were no deaths and no episodes of malaria that met WHO criteria for severe malaria. There were 19 episodes of malaria that were considered complicated and treated with quinine for the following reasons: single seizures, hyperparasitemia, inability to sit up or stand, persistent vomiting, and lethargy." ["Combination therapy for uncomplicated Falciparum Malaria in Ugandan children" p. 2210]

No one ever died from DDT. Not a bird. Not a baby. Just mosquitoes that killed babies. But every year more than a million people now die from a disease that was virtually under control in the 1970s. Most of those who die are children. JAMA is usually politically astute on social and political issues--left of center all the way. It's all aboard the global warming band wagon. It tippy-toes around the environmentalist disaster with this ridiculous comment:

"Following the collapse of the global eradication campaign in the early 1970s, malaria control programs around the world dwindled as funding dried up, technical guidance became confused and at times contradictory, and much of the global community seemed ready to accept that malaria was an unavoidable fact of life in tropical regions."

What nonsense! The eradication of malaria collapsed because somebody was more worried about bird eggs than African children living to adulthood. It's a very nasty disease to survive, let alone to die from. The survivors have life long disabilities. And there are many long term effects from the anti-malaria medications, to which the parasites are becoming resistent, so those meds are becoming stronger.

I shudder to think of all these people (pregnant women, babies and developing children) sleeping under or on pesticide treated nets and mats, the other brilliant plan to fight malaria. A ridiculously expensive plan, even if it were to work, and even if mats and nets could be distributed to every household in danger. It is so much easier, safer and cheaper to kill the disease at its source--the female mosquito! For 2003 it was estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa to get bed nets to 80% of the population would require 175.2 million insecticide-treated nets. I wonder how safe it is to work in a warehouse filled with thousands of ITNs, or to drive a truck load of them over bad roads in the hot sun to distribution centers. And roads. Are there roads by which these ITNs can get to the people who need them?

Meanwhile, the researchers/authors discuss how many women and children might be sleeping under the same net, and would that affect the number. How many angels dance on the head of a pin.