THE ANNOUNCEMENTS, in the academic joumals Nature and Science on 3rd October, of the sequencing of the genomes of one of the 170 malaria parasites and of a malaria-carrying mosquito, was greeted with much jubilation in the media. Malaria is one of the four most devastating infectious diseases (the others being dysentery, tuberculosis HIV/AIDS), killing 1-2 million people a year, 90 percent of them in Africa. This terrible statistic is compounded by a massive infection rate of 300-500 million people a year, many of whom become chronically debilitated.
The impact of all four diseases is increased by the poverty and social dislocation wrought by imperialism. In the case of malaria, inadequate drainage and sanitation in shanty towns provide stagnant water for mosquito larvae to grow. Overcrowding and poor housing make it easy for the mosquito to spread the parasite from person to person. migration spread the disease regionally and governments are unwilling or unable to carry out adequate control and eradication measures. This contrasts with parts .... of Europe, which had the resources to wipe out malaria in the 1950s. Direct Assault Needed
Control programmes cannot wait for the end of imperialism. Also, it is likely that improving the living conditions mentioned above would not suffice and direct assaults on the mosquitoes and parasites are and required. Knowledge of the proteins expressed by the mosquito and parasite genomes may lead to more accurately targeted drugs, pesticides or vaccines -with fewer harmful environmental consequences or side effects. However, big Pharma has little interest, as the disease is confined to the third world. Even with more resources, success is not guaranteed: the simpler HIV genome has been known for fifteen years, without a cure in sight.
The US military has supported malaria research, especially since their invasion of Vietnam. At times, its rate of loss of perWar and sonnel to malaria has been greater than losses in combat. This will presumably become a more urgent issue as the US military net spreads ever wider.
At the moment, malaria control is implemented by a combination of drugs (for prevention and treatment) and insecticides. Both efforts suffer from the parasite and mosquito evolving resistance, and from the poor infrastructure of control programmes. Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation has set itself the aim of halving malaria incidence by 2010. One of the weapons in its armoury will be the insecticide DDT. organic pollutant" (POP) is sprayed on the insides of houses (for instance several million buildings were sprayed with DDT in three provinces of South Africa in 1997/8). It has the advantages of being cheap and effective, provided it is used judiciously so the mosquito does not develop resistance. Silent Spring Rachel Carson's classic 1962 study The Silent Spring, showing its persistence and impact on bird populations, and was originally on the Programme's list of twelve POP's to be banned completely in 2000 and has been banned from manufacture or use in imperialist countries since the 1970s. POP's
This "persistent DDT was the subject of biologist
UN lions of lives. A valid target for all-out war: the mosquito tend to build up over time in fatty tissue. Exposure during childhood may affect the reproductive system and babies in houses sprayed with DDT can exceed the allowable intake by 5-18 times. In the years leading up to UNEP's POP convention, a fight developed over the status of DDT. The main protagonists were Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) supporting the ban and various right wing "think tanks", such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs on the other. The right saw a good opportunity for a fight with environmentalists, while the latter fell into a trap - of opposing outright the use of a chemical that has saved milThe environmental organisations were unable to defeat the argument that DDT had played a massive role in malaria reduction (and elimination in Europe) until its safety was questioned. So the POPs Treaty allows governments to use DDT for malaria control until a suitable replacement can be found.
Greenpeace and WWF now support a policy involving wall spraying (including DDT), insecticide-impregnated nets, drugs and environmental improvements. This seems to be a sensible approach, provided it is part of a massive, rapid malaria control programme.
A major, concerted effort, more ambitious than the WHO approach, and paid for by the drug companies and the imperialist powers, would reduce the need for repeated application of harmful chemicals. A publicly-funded collaboration should pursue the fruits of the genome research, with the knowledge publicly available.