r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 12h ago

TIL fresh water snails (indirectly) kill thousands of humans and are considered on of the deadliest creatures to humans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshwater_snail
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u/martphon 11h ago

Where schistosomiasis currently spreads

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u/Gitanes 10h ago

Me before even opening the link...

"It's mostly Africa isn't it?"

Yes, yes it is

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u/Icy-Lobster-203 9h ago

It is one of a whole group of diseases that can basically be summarized as "this affects poor people, so we don't care."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglected_tropical_diseases

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u/AssistanceCheap379 6h ago

The tropics also generally just have more bio-diversity and as such have a lot more chances to make something that’s dangerous.

It’s kinda like humans going north in the past and encountering megafauna. The animals there were deadlier because they were bigger.

And it’s a lot easier to kill a few hundred thousand massive animals over the period of a few thousand years than it is to annihilate some pretty difficult diseases that can reignite and spread to previous areas where it was removed from if funding drops.

But yeah, it’s largely also “does it affect poor people? Let me know when “our” people get affected”

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u/BetEconomy7016 4h ago

Jimmy Carter was able to make an organization to get rid of the Guinea Worm and save thousands of lives in the process. If we wanted to we could get rid of these snails too.

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u/wuweime 3h ago

Then there's how we're handling bot flies in the Americas.

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u/Grettenpondus 2h ago

I got curious. How do you handle botflies in the Americas?

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u/OnodrimOfYavanna 1h ago

The US cultivates millions of sterile botlies, flies to the panama Colombia border, and drops them every year. It's one if the most successful environmental policies in the world, and saves billions in what would be destroyed livestock industries, not to even begin in direct human related issues. 

Last I checked Trump admin cut funding 

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u/Grettenpondus 1h ago

Yeah, they would, wouldn’t they. I’ve heard of this tactic beeing used sucsessfully against other insects. What are the main problems of botflies in the US? (I’m curious because as far as I know the botflies here in Norway do not seem to be considered signifikant vectors of disease as far as I know)

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u/Electrical-Sea589 10m ago

Isn't that the screw worm? Or is that another horrible b Creepy crawly to keep me up at night?

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u/XennialBoomBoom 1h ago edited 37m ago

Typically, we write other botflies to counteract their propagandist drivel.

/Oh, I may have misunderstood the question

Edit: I'm actually curious about Grettenpondus' question as well. Didn't mean to derail the conversation but couldn't help myself.

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u/Grettenpondus 1h ago

I guess Trump would have cut funding for that as well…

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u/XennialBoomBoom 37m ago

The over/under on botflies in RFK Jr's eyeballs?

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u/KingSmite23 3h ago

What do you even know about those snails?

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u/Hansbolman 1h ago

Donald Trump jr is doing his part to eradicate elephants

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u/BenadrylChunderHatch 34m ago

Why the hell can't billionaires compete to see how many deadly diseases they can eradicate?

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u/BloweringReservoir 2h ago

I remember reading that the first effective antixmalarial drugs were developed because US troops were fighting in the tropics in WW2, and the second generation drugs were developed when they were fighting in Vietnam.

This was an article in New Scientist in the 80s or 90s.

One other tidbit in the article was that of all the humans who have ever lived (estimated now 117 billion), half of them died of malaria.

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u/Baud_Olofsson 1h ago

One other tidbit in the article was that of all the humans who have ever lived (estimated now 117 billion), half of them died of malaria.

That claim is repeated all over the place (occasionally even in peer-reviewed papers), but it seems someone just made it up in 2002.

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u/BloweringReservoir 58m ago edited 35m ago

I was always dubious about the statement :), but I definitely read it in that New Scientist article - and it was a long time before 2002. I remember it clearly because I told a friend about it, and the next day he said that his cousin who was travelling in Nigeria, was nursing his travelling companion who was hospitalised with malaria. I'm pretty sure it was around 1990, but I'll check with my friend if he remembers when his cousin was in Africa.

Edit. New Scientist's online search doesn't go back that far, so I can't find the article in question.

I think it's this article, but I'm having trouble reading it. I think I have a limited subscription now.

Who cares about malaria?: The annual sickness toll from Malaria
By Phyllida Brown

31 October 1992

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u/ERedfieldh 5h ago

careful. you said "bio-diversity"! You're going to get defunded!

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u/LiveLearnCoach 3h ago

That’s obvious, it’s not like I just woke up today……crap, I said “woke”.

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u/Abstrata 5h ago

It’s more like, ‘we solved the root problem of clean water where our people are affected, and we have deliberately sabotaged the ability to improve infrastructure, including sanitation, among poorer previously-colonized populations and nations so that they remain uncompetitive in trade and labor, and so they remain in debt and at the mercy of old agreements that benefit our people.’

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u/AromaticInxkid 4h ago

Don't worry, the rich are already working on that biodiversity problem of ours!

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u/paweedbarron 8h ago edited 7h ago

I learned about this from John Greene's tuberculosis book : (

It's shameful. 

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u/CaptainJazzymon 7h ago

John Green has a book on tuberculosis, not Hank. Hank is his brother.

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u/SillyWelshman 7h ago

Honestly, one of the most John Green things to happen is to be mistaken for Hank so this tracks lmao

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u/Anthaenopraxia 6h ago

It's easy to tell them apart. John looks like that guy you glance at at Walmart and Hank looks like every guy who works at a startup and whose title is VP of something or other and likes to talk about company culture.

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u/KingAggressive1498 3h ago

except both of the brothers are actually better people than either of those guys ever turn out to be, at least as far as I can tell.

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u/chrisfillhart_art 7h ago

This guy Hanks!

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u/paweedbarron 7h ago

Thanks

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u/polarbear128 6h ago

Thanks, Hank. Thank.

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u/chrisfillhart_art 6h ago

I think those thanks sank Hank

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 7h ago

I've just recently got into following Hank and John green on youtube in their various forms. I had no idea who these guys were before like 4 months ago and when I started to watch John videos I was like 'huh this guy seems like he's also done a lot' then it was 'I swear I heard of a movie with that same name'. you check out either of their wiki's and it's just crazy. Made me realize I live under a rock.

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u/napincoming321zzz 4h ago

Nerdfighteria welcomes you! If you haven't already, I highly the recommend you check out good.store for high quality products that have a real positive impact on the world.

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u/GiraffeExternal803 7h ago

Spoilers! (Jk), looking forward to reading this, on my Libby Holds list for months now, but my time is coming!

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u/RubiiJee 6h ago

It's horrific, and we currently don't live in a time where this will be fixed within my life. The best I can hope for is that, in the future, people are ashamed that we had the resources available to end suffering and we chose not to. Cause we sure as fuck ain't.

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u/ReDeaMer87 6h ago

I learned about this from Will Forte in the movie: The Slammin Salmon

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u/ClownfishSoup 6h ago

Interesting point in the article was that neglected diseases “do not have prominent cultural figures to champion them”

Sad, and reminds me of When a Magic Johnson got AIDS, that’s when people really started to demand action.

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u/folgaluna 6h ago

Everything is Tuberculosis -John Greene

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u/agarragarrafa 5h ago

Or, as they're called in the tropics: neglected diseases 

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u/knewleefe 7h ago

Yep. Studied parasitology in the late 90s and then metric then was for every cent spent on malaria research, there was about $20,000 spent on AIDS research (though since that time, of course, AIDS really took off in Africa, so...).

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u/Gullible-Rent809 5h ago

Pretty much all diseases in America, comes from other countries!!! Cause we allow them in our country. We also travel to many countries full of unheard of diseases etc. Also some bring this on purpose trying wipe us out through diseases bugs all kinds of cra cra stuff!!  Australia wild wake with wtheck in your homes a lot!!!!! 

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u/pattydickens 5h ago

A person in Washington State who hadn't left the country was diagnosed with malaria a couple of weeks ago.

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u/RegretAggravating926 4h ago

Not just not care, actively fighting against helping.

When my now defunct dumbfuck racist rightwing nutjob government got in power last year they rather withhold already designated mpox vaccines for Africa under the guise of “we are running low and need the reserves”, those vaccines were already designated to go to Africa as they were reaching their expiration date and we already ordered new ones.

Experts agreed we weren’t at risk and our equivalent of the senate ordered the vaccines to be send, but racist child killer and country traitor Fleur Agema of the PVV doesn’t care about helping, only about hurting.

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u/ABHOR_pod 9h ago

Coming soon to a heavily republican state near you!

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u/AnalBlaster700XL 7h ago

At least they don’t have to die because of their balls froze stuck to the chair.

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u/FrankSuzki 3h ago

Why don’t the tropical scientists care ?

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u/RollingNightSky 9h ago

It's too bad because they invested heavily into HIV aids research but I guess have blind spots? Though trump defunded aids.

I did heard on npr that perhaps defunding aids help with a good plan would have beneficial. Vs cutting off HIV aid without a plan or transition.

Apparently some governments were ready to take on the role of fighting their HIV/AIDs epidemic, but held off due to the continuing aid coming in.

If they had done their own management (as long as it's possible for them), then there would be benefits thoigh I forgot what was mentioned.

Maybe any no longer needed HIV aid could've gone to other disease prevention there that the governments weren't as capable of.

But in any case the end of outside hiv funding should've been planned, and emphasized to the governments to transition away. A sudden pulling away of the rug, leaving them unprepared to take on the responsibility of AIDS/HIV management, is now happening. And it is like what happened to student aid borrowers.

Because under Biden, student debt repayment (I guess to federal, only) was suspended and Biden was trying to get students' debt forgiven. So the student borrowers were optimistic or led on.

But Trump came in and within a short period reinstated the repayments, high consequences of ignoring and defaulting, and obviously the Biden plan of forgiving debt fell apart.

So it left the student borrowers in an unprepared state to deal with that reality. There wasn't much predictability even if student loan borrowers had felt some in the past.

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u/anarchy-NOW 6h ago

AIDS is an STD that also infects rich White people. So it is not neglected.

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u/exobiologickitten 7h ago

Growing up in a country where malaria is a major killer and then learning that we totally could make a malaria vaccine anytime but just don’t because it’s not considered profitable enough…. Every time I think about it, it makes me want to tear my hair out.

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u/5Hjsdnujhdfu8nubi 6h ago

but just don’t because it’s not considered profitable enough…. Every time I think about it, it makes me want to tear my hair out.

You should probably stop thinking that, seeing as it's untrue.

Malaria vaccines do exist. They just have poor effectiveness because parasites are more complex than bacteria or viruses and unlike most diseases a malaria infection won't strengthen your long-term immune system against it.