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Legendary pharaoh Tutankhamun was probably killed by the genetic blood disorder sickle cell disease, German scientists said Wednesday, rejecting earlier research that suggested he died of malaria. The team at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in the northern city of Hamburg questioned the conclusions of a major Egyptian study released in February on the enigmatic boy-king's early demise. That examination, involving DNA tests and computerised tomography (CT) scans on Tutankhamun's mummy, said he died of malaria after suffering a fall, putting to rest the theory that he was murdered. But the German researchers said in a letter published...

A new combination treatment for malaria is as effective as the "gold standard" therapy for the disease, but only needs to be taken once a day rather than twice, The Lancet reported on Friday. The new treatment, combining pyronaridine and artesunate, was tested at seven sites in Africa and three in Southeast Asia alongside the standard drugs, artemether and lumefantrine. > Its success against malarial parasites was first found centuries ago in ancient China but was rediscovered by Chinese medical researchers in the early 1970s. >

Discovery may inform new strategies for blocking malaria transmissionWhat: Scientists studying the Anopheles gambiae mosquito – the main vector of malaria – have found that when the mosquito takes a blood meal, that act triggers two enzymes to form a network of crisscrossing proteins around the ingested blood. The formation of this protein barrier, the researchers found, is part of the normal digestive process that allows so-called "healthy" or commensal gut bacteria to grow without activating mosquito immune responses. But there is a downside: The barrier also prevents the mosquito's immune defense system from clearing any disease-causing agents that may...

A type of bacteria that infects many insects may make mosquitoes more resistant to viruses that can be dangerous to humans, researchers have found. The discovery could be helpful in the battles against two painful and sometimes fatal diseases, dengue and chikungunya. Last year, researchers showed they could take Wolbachia bacteria from fruit flies and infect mosquitoes with it, cutting their already brief life spans by half. That discovery was important because most of the malaria transmitted by female mosquitoes is transmitted late in their lives. They must pick up the parasites by biting an infected human, and it takes...

I am a scientist, not a climatologist, so I don’t dabble in climatology. My speciality is the epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases. As the film began, I knew Mr Gore would get to mosquitoes: they’re a favourite with climate-change activists. When he got to them, it was all I feared. In his serious voice, Mr Gore presented a nifty animation, a band of little mosquitoes fluttering their way up the slopes of a snow-capped mountain, and he repeated the old line: Nairobi used to be ‘above the mosquito line, the limit at which mosquitoes can survive, but now…’ Those little mosquitoes...

Nature has recently published an interesting paper which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution...

Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. Infected mosquitoes inject immature malaria parasites into the skin when they bite; these travel to the liver where they mature and multiply. From there, they enter the bloodstream and attack red blood cells -- the phase that makes people sick. In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not,...

Artemisinin-based medicines fail a growing number of patients in Cambodia. The malaria parasite, carried by mosquitoes, is growing resistant to artemisinin-based drugs.James Gathany / CDC Malaria parasites in Cambodia are becoming increasingly resistant to the drug hailed as the world's best chance to eradicate the disease.Artemisinin-based drugs are currently the best weapon against malaria, a disease which kills around a million people every year and is spread by mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites such as Plasmodium falciparum. These parasites have already developed resistance to drugs such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, once the front line against the disease, so hopes have been...

Culture/Society Editorial EditorialSource: The Telegraph (U.K.)Published: 07/19/2001 Author: Terence KealeyPosted on 07/18/2001 16:55:32 PDT by Pokey78 THE World Health Organisation, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the UN environmental programme and its development programme, USAID, and almost all the other international representatives of the great and the good now campaign against DDT. But, perversely, the Third World still uses it. To those who believe that America under George W Bush and his gas-guzzling, permafrost-drilling accomplices is the source of all global pollution, this Third World defection is disappointing. Where are the virtuous blacks when we need them? DDT was introduced...

Yesterday Chris Matthews invited on Salon.com's Editor in Chief Joan Walsh to link the Holocaust Museum shooter to Rush Limbaugh but it was the "Hardball" host himself, on Thursday's show, who connected Sarah Palin to James von Brunn as he wondered if the Alaska Governor was "getting very close to the edge," of the same "attitude" of the "far right," and questioned "Is she talking their language?" After playing a clip of Palin expressing her concern that the federal government could get more involved in the running of the states, something any governor of a state would rightfully be worried...

In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world's poor will suffer as a result. The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim "is to achieve a 30% cut...

For two years the United Nations paid lip service to the truth that the insecticide DDT is a vital component of malaria control, but last week UN abandoned science in favor of superstition. The result is UN promotion of more dangerous and less efficient malaria control techniques. On May 5th, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program announced plans to reduce DDT use by 30% by 2014 and completely eliminate it by around 2020. In the mean time, the UN will roll out initiatives in 40 countries to test non-chemical methods of malaria control. In particular...

Yeah, it was a big joke when there was a race for the first to have a millions "tweeps" -- twitter friends. But Ashton Kutcher won the crown and he made a silly situation mean a lot more when he promised to make a big donation to help fight malaria.Malaria infects 300-500 million people worldwide annually, according to UNICEF statistics. Nearly 1 million people die each year from the mosquito-borne disease. The majority of deaths are to children in sub-Saharan Africa. You can read more about what Christian organizations are trying to do at this link:http://everydaychristian.com/news/story/1787/and you can make a donation to World Vision's...

This is Bakouma Kpatekatola, a young man from the West African nation of Togo. In 2003, when Bakouma was 9 years old, my family became his sponsor through the Childreach-Plan USA organization. In the years since we became occasional pen pals; a few times a year we'd get a letter from him, in his native French, along with an English translation from his caseworker. Continued

"Climate Change" does. About the only thing that climate change is demonstrably the cause of is a complete abandonment of irony and reason by those who preach it. This is yet another illustration of how rampant climate change envirodorkism beats up on poor people. This sick, twisted movement is full of faux do-good nutcases who couldn't intellectually grasp the obvious if it broke into their closed minds with a crowbar.

To make his point about the deadly and fearsome plague of malaria, Gates released a glass full of mosquitoes on the unsuspecting crowd at the Technology, Entertainment Design Conference in Long Beach, California. Did Gates plan on infecting some rich folks to prove his point? The answer is yes, although Gates quickly pointed out that the pests released were not malarial. Mr. Moneybags only intended to infect his audience with guilt. And guilt-inducement is the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel. It has become the go-to move for so-called progressives when intellectual argument fails and one can't muster the facts...

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd. Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the...

A team of Monash University researchers led by Professor James Whisstock has made a major breakthrough in the international fight against malaria, which claims the life of a child across the world every 30 seconds. The research, performed in collaboration with Professor John Dalton at the University of Technology, Sydney, provides a new approach to treating and controlling the disease that is contracted by half a billion people and causes around 1 million deaths a year. The team, based at the Monash University ARC Centre of Excellence in Structural and Functional Microbial Genomics, has been able to deactivate the final...

“That spirit of looking out for one another, that core value that says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper,’ that spirit is most evident during times of great tragedy. It’s most evident during times of great hardship, it’s most when natural disasters strike. We all understand that we have to come together.” – Sen. Barack Hussein Obama (D-Ill.) on the campaign trail, Sept. 2, 2008 Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) frequently claims on the hustings, as part of his campaign for the presidency, that he would like to usher in a new era of “change” where Americans...

June 10, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Drug Resistance Is DeadlyPharmaceutical knock-offs may threaten our ability to treat malaria. By Roger Bate Thai government officials, led by commerce permanent secretary Siriphol Yodmuangcharoen, will meet with their Washington counterparts on June 10, hoping to persuade the U.S. Trade Representative to remove Thailand from its “Priority Watch List.” Thailand is one of nine countries listed, earning its place because of intellectual property-rights violations by the previous Bangkok government — which broke patents on AIDS and heart drugs, undermining its trade relationship with the U.S., and harming foreign investment. While the U.S. will continue...