I also found a PBS/BBC/Carlton TV documentary called “Malaria: Fever Wars”, I asked for that one too.

There is an active work on creating a dengue fever vaccine, as it has changed over the years to become very nasty. Basically causing non-stop bleeding everywhere, and having had it once does not guarantee one would be protected from its other nastier forms:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs117/en/

Just checked the wiki article on Ronald Ross, and noted that he had several contributions to applied math, since I plan to study that soon — I will be sure to check out that book. Thanks.

(by the way the book “Panama Fever” describes what makes the mosquito that transmits malaria much harder to eradicate than the one that transmits yellow fever, the latter preferred clean water near humans so tins of fresh water were left out and then after the larvae were floating on top they were summarily dumped on the ground).

Interested to hear you were a military brat. I personally know one distinguished (US) scientist from such a B/G, though doubtless there are many.

Penny just dropped re. “Gorgas Hospital” as your birthplace – of course Gorgas was the US army doc trying to eradicate Yellow Fever. The Mosquitoes… book recounts how Ronald Ross tried a similar thing with malaria as “Army malaria supremo” in British India, to essentially zero effect. The reasons for the differing successes of Gorgas and Ross is part of what the book is about.

Impressed by your encounter w dengue fever. Dengue turned up on some list I read just recently of “most common neglected diseases” (i.e. most common diseases that are not much studied, or much effort put into cures and treatments, since first-world folk don’t get them and hence there isn’t any real money in it).

The generic form is “military brat”, but that is perfectly accurate. We are an odd bunch, having survived several years of being without a parental unit (who is overseas being shot at), or changing schools (I graduated from the 9th school district I attended).

Dr. Aust, that sounds like a very good read. William McNeill’s “Plagues and Peoples” is also a bit dry at times, but on the whole was fascinating.

By the way, I have survived another mosquito born disease: dengue fever. The trick is that surviving it once does not confer immunity, but makes one more vulnerable to a deadly form of dengue fever. Yikes!

…for anyone interested in tropical diseases and/or examples of scientific / medical hubris, a good read is Gordon Harrison’s Mosquitoes, malaria, and man: A history of the hostilities since 1880.

(Now out of print, but should be in many Univ and public libraries, plus available 2nd hand)

It is a bit dry and scholarly in parts, but makes a fascinating read especially for its account of the doomed “War on Malaria” via trying to eradicate the vector, i.e. the pesky Anopheles.

- The lack of success of which endeavour emphasises once again why we DO need the vaccine researchers to go on trying to make a malaria vaccine, elusive though it has been.

Of course, if vaccines continue to be demonized, then there is always the chance that vaccine research will become something that scientists, doctors and manufacturers prefer not to bother with.

I’ll edit Dr Crislip’s piece into the main post because it is readable – thank you.

By the way, today another very readable article on vaccines by an actual infectious disease doctor was posted here:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=186