#malaria no more

[chimaerakitten]

Malaria, Sickle-Cell, and Dragons in the Temeraire Universe

so I've been thinking about sickle cell all day because of the very cool real-life FDA crispr treatment approval news, and also I'm just about done rereading empire of ivory so thusly it is time to write the sickle cell/malaria/dragons/benefits of human-dragon mutualism breakdown I mentioned ages ago.

Standard disclaimer that I am not in fact anywhere near an expert on this, this is mostly recall from ANTH 102/215 classes I took five years ago, the info is very simplified and possibly somewhat out of date. I'm doing some quick checks and I write this but only enough to make this an appropriate fantasy novel fandom post, not enough to make it actually reliably informative. I do have a couple citations, but mostly for the parts I'm lifting straight out of a class assignment I wrote, and they're a short documentary hosted on YouTube and the textbook for the class. also none of my links are live because I want this fandom post to actually show up in the fandom tag lol.

second disclaimer is I'm starting at the basic obvious stuff because I genuinely have no idea how much most people know about this and better safe than confusing.

Intro and Background

So the first thing to know about any of this is that human genetics for the most part to not operate on mendelian inheritance. So the punnet squares in high school biology that did human hair or eye color as basic dominant/recessive one-gene traits were totally lying to you. Like they're a teaching tool for a very simple model that works well enough but they're not accurate. Most human phenotypes are way way more complicated genetically than that.

That said, there are exceptions. Mendelian traits (Characteristics that are influenced by alles at only one genetic locus) do exist in humans, a number of them being related to genetic diseases. The list in the ANTH 102 notes I just dug up was: Wet (dominant) or dry Earwax; Albinism; Brachydactyly (dominant); Blood type (ABO, not the positive/negative part); Hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome (BRCA-1, BRCA-2, unknown genes); Huntington’s disease; Lactase persistence (dominant); and Sickle-cell disease (recessive).

So the sickle cell punnet square looks like this for two parents who both have one copy of the sickle cell gene:

Sickle cell is a very painful and life threatening disease, (That's why the FDA approving a crispr treatment for it allowing patients to be their own bone marrow donors is very exciting.) and from an evolutionary perspective, one that very often prevents people from reproducing. It's also not strictly dominant/recessive, in that people heterozygous for sickle cell can have some symptoms like the possibility a sickle-cell crisis triggered in low-oxygen situations (high altitudes, intense exercise, etc).

So one might think that Sickle cell would be a vanishingly rare disease, since having it can be deadly and even having the trait can in some cases cause problems. Only it's not rare by genetically inherited disease standards, not at all.

And to make a long story very short, the reason is malaria.

Malaria

People who are heterozygous (possessing one sickle cell gene and one normal gene) for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria. In areas of the world without a high incidence of malaria historically, there is a strong selection against the sickle cell gene, (Biointeractive Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia, 9:33) but in areas with malaria, both having sickle cell disease (homozygous HbSS) and not having the trait at all (homozygous HbAA) are selected against. People with sickle cell were historically less likely to reproduce, and people who were not resistant to malaria were more likely to die of malaria and also not reproduce. Because being heterozygous with sickle cell is selected for, the gene persists in the population.

The implications of that are best summed up from this map that I just stole from Britannica.com:

I dunno if the percentages on that second one are accurate tbh, other infographic maps I'm looking at give different ranges. but sill, you get the gist about how common it is in equatorial Africa. In the modern United States Black children are much much more likely to be born with sickle cell than white children—the genes don't just go away when the threat of malaria is removed. (And yeah, that's a historical consequence of the slave trade.)

There's some other stuff wrapped up in here too about bio-cultural evolution: There's indications that malaria was not a “significant problem until humans abandoned food foraging for farming” (Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B.). Humans cleared away the forest, which had kept the soil absorbent. Without the vegetation, more water built up on the surface, forming stagnant puddles which were a perfect environment for malaria-causing mosquitoes to thrive, thus creating the conditions for sickle cell anemia to be advantageous. Farming creates caloric surplus which is great for humans, but it also changes the environment in ways that can be detrimental. Malaria is one way, creating the conditions for other epidemic diseases to thrive is another, etc. etc.

But if you've read this far you're probably going "Chi, you promised this would be a fandom post but so far this has been a serious and kind of sad post about disease. when are you going to get to the dragons?"

The Dragons

So the first time malaria comes up in the Temeraire books is in Throne of Jade, when a bunch of the sailors on the Allegiance come down with "malarial Fevers."

Jane, I must ask you to forgive the long gap in this Letter, and the few hasty Words that are all by which I can amend the same now. I have not had Leisure to take up my pen these three weeks—since we passed out of Banka Strait we have been much afflicted by malarial Fevers. I have escaped sickness myself, and most of my men, for which Keynes opines we must be grateful to Temeraire, believing that the heat of his body in some wise dispels the Miasmas which cause the ague, and our close association thus affords some protection. But we have been spared only to increase of Labor: Captain Riley has been confined to his bed since almost the very first, and Lord Purbeck falling ill, I have stood watch in turn with the ship’s third and fourth lieutenants, Franks and Beckett. Both are willing young men, and Franks does his best, but is by no means yet prepared for the Duty of overseeing so vast a Ship as the Allegiance, nor to maintain discipline among her Crew—stammers, I am sorry to say, which explains his seeming Rudeness at table, which I had earlier remarked upon.

I do not know enough about what people thought about malaria in the 19th century to be 100% sure that this is actually malaria, but I think Novik wouldn't want to confuse her readers by calling something malarial that isn't you know..malaria. So I'm going to assume thats what it is. Google is not giving me figures on malaria survival rates before modern medicines for it which is driving me kind of nuts and means I can't say how lucky Riley and Purbeck were to survive with apparently no complications, but that's not the point here anyway. The point is the comment about the aviators not getting sick.

And not only (mostly) not getting sick, but not getting sick even though they aren't actually always near Temeraire. Laurence for example has been working watch shifts near constantly because he's the only one left on the ship who knows what he's doing. That means probably less read & cuddle time than is normal for him and Temeraire, and yet—no malaria.

We modern readers (and Novik) know that malaria is not caused by "miasmas" but by parasites carried by mosquitos. And lo and behold when we get to Empire of Ivory we get:

Mosquitoes sang happily as dusk drew on, though they did not come very close to Temeraire; the flies were less judicious. The shapes of the trees were growing vague when Temeraire woke with a start and said, “Laurence, there is someone coming, there,” and the grass rustled on the opposite bank.

So yeah, the dragons are keeping the mosquitos away. I know fuck all about why—it's probably not heat since you know, mosquitos like warm blooded organisms, but maybe it's an oil or a chemical or some artifact of the way some of them can breathe fire that's present in all dragons or something, they're described as smelling weird a few times, so who knows. If it's a substance like an oil in their skin that could explain why the aviators don't get sick even when they're not nearby, since they could have some on them from contact, but that's just speculation. The point is not the mechanism, just that it's happening.

The Point

This whole post grew out of a throwaway comment I made about the benefits of mutualistic symbiosis with dragons from the human perspective in that one post about how the series has some interesting stuff obviously going on psychologically/biologically. The point of going in-depth on malaria and sickle cell is to show how this is really impressively solid worldbuilding in relation to the Tswana.

See, Empire of Ivory describes locations that seem like they're in modern day Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, regions which will have had long-term problems with malaria-causing mosquitos. That's not the densest area for sickle cell, but still definitely in the region where malaria would have exerted selective pressure.

Selective pressure which, in a universe where just being around a dragon is going to drastically reduce malaria rates, is going to leave dragon-friendly populations a lot healthier than dragon-unfriendly ones. A community that has a dragon stay every night and work alongside humans during the day is going to have a lot less malaria even without the sickle cell resistance than a community which has no dragon. And considering that malaria is bad enough that sickle cell genes persist despite it also having a high chance to cause a deadly disease, whereas a dragon that's a fully prosocial member of the community is not going to cause more death and instead will probably help with defense and create more caloric surplus (at the cost of consuming most of that surplus) a dragon is just obviously the better option. From there, it's extremely easy to see how the Tswana in the series could develop such a dragon-centric culture and have it be so wildly successful. The dragons provide fertilizer, the dragons allow for fully domesticated elephants, and the dragons render malaria—one of the deadliest diseases in history—nearly a nonissue. Of course they're family.

Citations:

Biointeractive. (2014, August 26). Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia - HHMI BioInteractive Video. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsbhvl2nVNE

Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B. (2017). Anthropology: The Human Challenge (15th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.

[clodiuspulcher]

today im thinking about malaria in ancient rome.

about the fact that P. falciparum (the most dangerous kind of malaria) was likely endemic at least from the 2nd century BC onward that Galen said semitertian fevers (P. falciparum infections) were more common in Rome than anywhere else in the Roman Empire that the most severe manifestations of P. falciparum (quotidian fevers + cerebral malaria) were most common in babies and young children, an epidemiological observation that indicates the transmission rate of P. falciparum was extremely high in Rome that Quintus Serenus said there was no Latin word for semitertian fevers (they used a transliteration of the Greek, 'hemitritaeos') because "no one, i think, could have named it in our language and mothers would not have wanted to"

[coulsonlives]

Everyone.

Look.

They're transgendering the mosquitos.

"This group of XX individuals showed male-specific traits, including a plumose antenna (red arrowhead) and claspers (blue arrowheads). This group also showed anomalies in the proboscis and accordingly they could not bite and feed on blood." (Source)

In other words: CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to genetically modify female mosquitoes by making their proboscis male, which leaves them unable to pierce skin.

[elektroblues]

B-Movie: Lust & Sound In West-Berlin 1979-1989

[stellerssong]

new fic in revisionsverse! featuring Despair, the most convoluted method ever of telling your brother "hey we need to talk," and more than you probably cared to know about the possibly critically endangered but more likely extinct Hawaiian ʻōʻū.

[twicethetrouble]

Writing Family Web Daily: Day 21 (3 WEEKS!!)

[content warning for blood. Still. it's getting cleaned up tho. should be done with it by next part. maybe.]

“It's fine! It's fine!” Leo said, arms up placatingly before Donnie could join in on the panic. And everyone was tense again. Great. “It's just some cuts on his forehead that blead through the night. We're getting it cleaned up now to get a better look.”

“Then who screamed?”

“Raph.”

Donnie glanced between Mikey and Raph before nodding.

“Valid reaction to this,” Donnie said, shifting from foot to foot. “I'm a...going to make tea. In the kitchen. Away from all this.”

“I'll send Raph to you when i can pry Mikey out of his grasp!” Leo called as Donnie disappeared towards the kitchen as quickly as he had appeared.

The trip to the bathroom was otherwise uneventful. Once there, Leo had Raph sit on the closed toilet seat with Mikey sitting in his lap. He then used a damp washcloth and started gently blotting at the dried blood, trying to remove it as carefully as possible, starting with Mikey's eyes. It took a bit before Mikey could open them again, and Leo could move on to actually looking for the wounds.

“Yeah, that's what i thought,” Leo mused, finally uncovering one such injury. If he had to guess, there was at least three more buried there as well. “Hey Mikey, you know how i said you were getting eye sockets?”

“Yeah?”

“Well congratulations are in order, because those eye sockets do, in fact have eyes in them. Eyes that just opened up for the first time,” Leo explained.

“Are you for real?”

[jjsanguine]

Gun: let's go home

Cher: Nah, I'll just sleep out here. I want thoop to see a familiar face at least.

Gun: ...

Cher: can you tell Jack I'm sick tomorrow? I don't want to tell people Thoop's in jail, y'know?

Gun, on the phone: hello Ms Aoi? I can't come into work tomorrow for work reasons

Gun, off the phone: Cher I'm keeping you company, no you can't talk me out of this

[consult-sherlockholmes]

Well it could be a flea bite and this could be the plague.

But I don't have any boils given that it's called the bubonic plague so that is very unlikely. And I don't have fleas, who do you think I am? I am very hygienic, even if I sleep in a drug den.

[katkalis-the-horror-fanartist]

What is Augeistines preference, male or female

BASICALLY, Augustine has no gender nor sexuality preference. Through specific circumstances, he CAN develop feelings for some.

Only took the boss's orders to finally get it out of him-

[ghoul-haunted]

as someone who reads books about renaissance medicine and the impact that syphilis had on italy for fun, this is a faulty conclusion to arrive to for at least three different reasons and also fuck sanuto! you don't actually have to cite sanuto! we HAVE testimony from like, five different physicians and doctors and I PROMISE you if it was syphilis the doctor from naples would've said so in his own notes, SANUTO WASN'T EVEN THEREEEEE and also. the thing about when sanuto listed people who were afflicted with the french disease. it included syphilis but was NOT limited to syphilis because it had a lot more to do with diseases of war, and the diagnostic rubric of the time mean that (I am forcibly removed from the podium)

[wellenklavier]

tagged by @elektroblues :D

harder than i thought it would be to fill this out 🥴

tagging (no obligation :p) @cementgoth @renedemarie82 @kingtrigger @zemnarihah and anybody else who wants to :)

[clodiuspulcher]

i need u all to know how much i enjoyed the first 4 seasons of the magnus archives. i was listening to it while biking home in the coldest darkest nights i've ever experienced (southern transplant to new england). i was listening to it taking care of my parasites. i was listening to it at the gym. i took long walks to listen to it on vacation w/ my family. i was ADDICTED despite getting here like 4 years late. i think i binged the first 4 seasons in a month or two. it was crazy. and i could not finish season 5 i just couldn't get past like 3 episodes.

[icryyoumercy]

... sometimes i hate the fact that entirely irrelevant knowledge about people will result in me deciding their academic research is entirely untrustworthy

on the other hand, if someone manages to catch malaria while on their honeymoon in the late 90's, i feel entirely justified in doubting their ability to understand basic information and follow simple rules, which does not give me very high hopes for the merit of their academic writing

[elektroblues]

tagged by @cherry-pop-soda thanks cherry <33

open pinterest, make a moodboard out of the first nine pictures that show up, and tag your mutuals :)

tagging @fluffonthefloor @staticspxcelover @hoch-rot @jeffament @aliennasaprincess @inyourroomalbumversion @hulubalanggeneration02

[wamathai]

African economies could expand by $127 billion if malaria was cut by 90%

Malaria No More UK has released a new report titled ‘The Malaria Dividend’ that indicates that African countries could experience a GDP rise of $127 billion dollars if the UN target to cut malaria by 90% from 2015 levels by 2030 is met. This represents an average boost of nearly $16bn per year to African economies, which adds up to more than 10% of what all countries on the continent spend on…

[moonlitlex]

people on this website whove never been to a tropical country will really go on and on about how mosquitoes are great huh