First origin of malaria may have been found

[G_j]

Source: AP

First origin of malaria may have been found

By Associated Press
Monday, August 3, 2009 - Added 1m ago


WASHINGTON — Scientists say they may have tracked down the origins of the deadly disease malaria — chimpanzees.

In recent years diseases like HIV-AIDS and Ebola have been traced to chimpanzees, and a study being released Tuesday shows that this is nothing new, according to Dr. Nathan D. Wolfe, an author of the report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Malaria has been a human disease as long as history," Wolfe, of Stanford University and the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, said in a telephone interview.

"It is now clear that a new disease that successfully jumps from an animal to a human can last not just for decades, but millennia or more," Wolfe said. "This makes the task of stopping future disease spillovers from animals to humans vital, not only for saving lives today, but for the health of people for many generations to come."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year more than a million people, mostly children, die of malaria worldwide.

Read more: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/general/view/20090803first_origin_of_malaria_may_have_been_found/

[aquart]

1. I love this stuff.

[YOY]

2. I keep telling folks that those hairy little canibals are not cute...

quod erat demonstrandum... That one's been working as a spy for several years.

[alfredo]

4. Having one rip off the face of that woman should be a clue to their

violent nature.

The Bonobo, now that is an animal that would rather fuck than fight.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Maybe fat people came from chimps too

:shrug:

[Demeter]

5. There Are 4 Parasites That Can Cause Malaria

and transmission is via mosquito bite, as the mospuito is an intermediate host. How does that matter? Both chimps and humans are bitten by mosquitoes, presumably. That doesn't imply that chimps started it.

[Mithreal]

6. Read the article?

"We now know that malaria, while at least thousands of years old, did not originate in humans but rather was introduced into our species, presumably by the bite of a mosquito that had previously fed on a chimpanzee."

"The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Tufts University and the National Geographic Society."