It takes a thief to catch a thief, and it takes a disease to make a vaccine against it. Many vaccines use disease agents so weak that they are not dangerous, yet strong enough to provoke the reaction that will make the body immune to the disease. One disease against which there is no effective vaccine is malaria, inflicted on millions of victims every year. It can be treated after it appears, it can be avoided by regular and prolonged use of prophylactic drugs, and it can be fought by using pesticides on the mosquitoes that spread it; but it cannot be prevented by an abundantly available vaccine like smallpox or diphtheria can.
On a microscopic scale, there is a vaccine. In 1967 Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig of New York University showed that mice can be protected against malaria by injecting them with sporozites
¾the tiny parasites active in the first of the three stages of the disease¾which had been made harmless by (you guessed it) irradiation. The flaw: the only way to get the sporozites is to dissect the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes¾not exactly suited for mass production.But what is needed for immunity against malaria are not the sporozites, only their antigens (disease weapons) that will provoke the antibodies (counterweapons), and even the antigens are not needed for themselves, but for discovering what they are made of.
That has now been achieved by the Nussenzweigs using techniques of something even more monstrous than radiation: genetic engineering. Malaria is not yet conquered, but the decisive breakthrough may have been made.
Genetic engineering is opposed by the sporozites and by Prof. George Wald, and research in this area with federal funds without an environmental impact statement and the accompanying hearings has been ruled illegal by Judge John Sirica of Watergate [AtE Jul 84].
The reason why this item belongs in this newsletter is not so much the radiation as the anti-scientific stand taken against genetic engineering, especially by left-wing reactionaries like Wald (who also abuses the prestige of his Nobel Prize for spreading superstitious scares about nuclear power) or media darlings like Sirica. Watergate lies beyond what appears in the subtitle of our masthead, yet I believe most readers will be interested in this description of Sirica's role by British historian Paul Johnson in his outstanding Modern Times (Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 651-2:
"But it caught the attention of a publicity-hungry federal judge, John Sirica, known as 'Maximum John' for the severity of his sentences
¾ and not, in any other circumstances, a justice likely to enjoy the approval of the liberal press. When the burglars came before him, he gave them provisional life sentences to force them to provide evidence against members of the Administration. That he was serious was indicated by the fact that he sentenced the only man not to comply, Gordon Liddy, to twenty years in prison, plus a fine of $40,000, for a first offense of breaking and entering, in which nothing was stolen and no resistance offered to police. This act of judicial terrorism, which would have been impossible in any other country under the rule of law, was to be sadly typical of the juridical witch-hunt by means of which members of the Nixon Administration were hounded, convicted (in some cases pleading guilty to save the financial ruin of an expensive defence) and sentenced."
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Vol. 12, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 12, No. 3 Date: November 29, 2004 12:56 PM Title: On your enemy's terms
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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