Yes, lemurs are fairly similar to humans in the bigger scheme of things. Poor Andy! Sorry to hear about his paralysis. I wonder if it really was lepto, rat lungworm, both, or something else altogether behind it?
This highlights one of the biggest problems with tropical diseases: underidentification and misdiagnosis. Most medical staff in the USA have next to no training in tropical parasitology ...and even with good training and some field experience it can be tough to figure out the actual cause of diverse symptoms which could stem from any of a number of possible causes. Earlier this morning I was on the phone with a couple of physician friends of mine, trying to talk them into moving to the Big Island and setting up shop there, all of us together, once all of our last kids still in the houses have flown the coop for college. After all, who wants to just sit around doing nothing useful in retirement? The challenge of sorting out tropical parasite issues was actually a selling point with this crowd (I spent a couple years in Indonesia examining human and animal fecal specimens under the microscope for parasites, so this at least is one area where I can lay claim to "know my sh*t" -literally. Just amazing what turns up in that smelly stuff). Anyhow, point is, misidentification of illness is probably way more common than correct identification.
Indeed, this probably accounts for people thinking the snails carry
Leptospira (which seems questionable) and appearing unaware of the problem with the rat lungworm which snails actually do transmit.
Leptospira is a corkscrew-shaped bacterium, whereas the rat lungworm is a nematode (roundworm), so people probably think that the problem from rat lungworm would be worms in the lungs. For rats, yes, but humans are not the usual terminal host for this nematode, so the larval form goes looking for a place to live and develop ...but (usually) in vain. As the CDC says, the outcome of infection with rat lungworm larvae from snails in humans is "eosinophilic meningitis ...The symptoms can include headache, stiff neck, tingling or painful feelings in the skin, low-grade fever, nausea, and vomiting" -which does not sound at all like having worms in the lungs because it is not: the rat lungworm larvae are setting up shop on the spinal cord and brain in humans. My guess is that because the symptoms sound like problems which would trace back to a bacterial infection and
Leptospira is a likely candidate to take the fall for such malaise in Hawaii, many instances of angiostrongylosis (rat lungworm larval infections) are pinned on lepto and other illness instead.
Helminths --a collective term for the parasitic worms, including liver flukes (trematodes), roundworms (nematodes, like hookworm), and tapeworms (cestodes)-- are a bothersome lot with stages in their life cycle which live in completely different hosts. The larval form of a helminth can live in a totally different host than the adult form and look so different from one another it is hard to believe they are the same species. The most familiar way to put it may be to suggest an analogy in thinking of a caterpillar as a larval form, a chrysalis as an encysted form, and a butterfly as an adult form. Caterpillars live on leaves and munch them, a chrysalis hangs on a twig or may be buried hidden in the soil, a butterfly flits about sipping nectar from flowers -yet all three are the same exact creature at different stages. Plus the egg stage. Same deal with helminths, except that they generally live on blood and at high magnification look like really scary aliens from a horror/science fiction film or comics (especially Japanese films or comics -what is it with the Japanese and the fascination with tentacles?) The rat lungworm larvae are accidentally, not intentionally, ingested by humans and since we are not the host the larvae were evolutionarily developed to survive in, they cause big problems.
Same deal with anisakiasis, by the way, caused by eating infected raw fish (sashimi and sushi) with larval visceral migraines (think "migraine headache of the abdomen") resulting when larvae of
Anisakis nematode worms burrow around in human innards trying to find a place to be happy. They are not happy, and share their experience with us in consequence as they keep moving from place to place, looking for a home away from home in our tissues (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisakis).
But coming back to the giant African snails and rat lungworm, as I was observing the snails crawling hither and yon in their vast legions amidst a Puna forest the main thought I was thinking to myself was "hmmm, unexploited protein source." Not so much for humans directly (I am with Carey about snails usually being a waste of good garlic sauce, though I must admit I did enjoy excellent escargo at a restaurant in Santa Fe, NM, one time -they were boiled in butter and topped with molten cheese). Rather, my thought was in wondering what it would take in the way of processing to render giant African snails harmless in terms of infectivity (for rat lungworm, lepto, and whatever else they may transmit) and turn them into a calcium-and-protein rich chicken food or duck food. All those snail shells, ground up, would probably make for a good biologically available poultry eggshell mineral source, with processed snail flesh enhancing the diet of the birds.
My guess is that (going at it low tech) boiling up 55 gallon drums of snails would probably do it to kill the bad guys inside the snail flesh, followed by running the cooked snails through a grinder to pulverize the shells, then putting the hot paste through a pelletizing extruder together with starch binders (taro paste?) and other locally available ingredients. Seems like that would do the job. Or, the mill could be set to produce a meal or flour instead of pellets, depending on what the poultry, swine, or whatever take best as feed. All very straightforward as long as there is enough of a raw source of supply for the snails, affordable and well-protected labor to collect the snails (can giant African snails be baited into collecting themselves inside big basket traps or somesuch, I wonder?), and economically viable processing available. If the chickens, ducks, swine, et cetera would even eat the stuff- it may taste bad. Be worth checking. If all else fails then it could serve as garden soil fertilizer.
Such a snail-to-feed-or-fertilizer processing effort need not be terribly capital-intensive and high tech; in Alaska 55 gallon drums of salmon are boiled over wood fires and the salmon slurry then given to the sled dogs for chow or poured on garden patches to fertilize the soil. Cabbages and pumpkins weighing hundreds of pounds each, here. Really!
Does anyone know if this notion with neutralizing snail vector hazard, getting rid of garden pests, and producing either animal feed or garden fertilizer all at once has already been tested out? Seems like if this notion is economically viable and would work in terms of technical feasibility then it would have already been done long ago.
)'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'(
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman
"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."
NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt
)'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'(
Edited for typos.
]