Abbey Thomas
Mr. Ippolito
AP Biology / Current Event
9 March 2018
Murphy, Heather. “They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease.”
The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/health/parasitic-worms-schistosomiasis-trial.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ftrilobites.
For this week’s current event, I reviewed Heather Murphy’s article entitled “They’re Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease”. The article focuses on the research done by a Norwegian infectious disease physician at Leiden University Medical Center, named Meta Roestenberg. She is studying schistosomiasis, and infectious disease that affects more than 200 million people, and killing thousands, and is primarily found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Schistosomiasis is caused by larvae that live in the shells on freshwater snails, that when inside the human body, will reproduce and cause chronic pain, fever, organ failure, internal bleeding, or genital infections that increase the chance of being infected by HIV. Roestenberg give students male parasites that cause the disease, and they are small so no reproduction happens, and the students are being treated with different drugs in hopes of finding one that could kill the parasites. So far her work has been successful, but there still are doctors that question how effective the drugs will be. One researcher, named Daniel Colley from the University of Georgia, said “that the drug is “not terribly effective” and given that the worms’ life span is five to 10 years, “That is a long time to have something as ugly as a schistosome living in your blood vessels, putting out excrement and things,’”. But many other researchers agree that the testing is unorthodox, but are willing to try it so that a vaccine can be found.
If Roestenberg research is success it will save the lives of thousands of people in Sub-Saharan Africa. Roestenberg’s need for “challenge trial” also highlights a problem within the medical community. Since this disease is not usually found outside of Africa, many large research groups stationed in the US and Europe are not looking for a vaccine since it does not affect them directly. Along with these issues, the lack of vaccine for Schistosomiasis is also due to lack of funding because companies do not want to invest in vaccines if they do not know if it will be effective on people. The problem with these claims is that it requires money to do trials to see if it is effective on humans, and so the production of vaccines like Schistosomiasis is put on stand still.
Overall, Murphy’s article on the research being done for Schistosomiasis disease was very well done and researched. One thing that Murphey did well during her article was explain why Dr. Roestenberg needed to do a challenge trial to find a vaccine, and this information helped the reader understand why the drastic tests were being done. One of her article’s weakness was that she quoted sources, but since she did not include their position in the infectious disease field, it was hard to know if they actually knew about this disease of were outsiders. She could strengthen this weakness by including how these researchers related to the topic.
Hannah Beldotti
ReplyDeleteCurrent Event #18
AP Bio
March 8, 2018
Murphy, Heather. “They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease.”
The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/health/parasitic-worms-schistosomiasis-trial.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ftrilobites.
This week, I decided to read Abbey Thomas’ current event review of Heather Murphy’s, “They’re Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease.” The article that she reviewed discusses research done by Meta Roestenberg regarding an infectious disease that kills and affects many in Africa. There were many aspects of Abbey’s review that I would like to compliment. First off, her summary in her introduction paragraph was well-written and concise. Therefore, it provided the reader with some background on the topic on which the article was written about. Secondly, it was interesting to see what Abbey thought the author could have improved upon. For example, in her concluding paragraph, she states, “One of her article’s weakness was that she quoted sources, but since she did not include their position in the infectious disease field, it was hard to know if they actually knew about this disease of were outsiders. She could strengthen this weakness by including how these researchers related to the topic.” Lastly, her paragraph on how this topic is useful in making future advancements was well-written. Abbey managed to mention how the success would be beneficial, but also what problems could arise. Although Abbey’s article was very well-written, there are some improvements that could be made. For example, her final paragraph does not seem to clearly conclude her review. She states what the author did well and could improve upon, however, she never states a concluding sentence that wraps up her review.
I originally chose Abbey’s review because I was intrigued by the title of the article of which she reviewed. Overall, I found Abbey’s current event review to be well done. I learned many things while reading it as well. For example, I had no idea what the disease, schistosomiasis was and what dangerous potential it has. So, it was interesting to read about it and see how researchers are working towards solutions.
Ellie Parson
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology
March 18, 2018
Citations:
Murphy, Heather. “They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease.”
The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/health/parasitic-worms-schistosomiasis-trial.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ftrilobites.
Thomas, Abbey. “They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease.” The New York Times.
Comment:
Abbey Thomas wrote a superb review on “They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease” by Heather Murphy, an author from the New York Times. One aspect well done can be found in her summary, where she includes a quote from a researcher about the experiments led by Meta Roestenburg in attempts to cure Schistosomiasis. This quote includes a different point of view on Roestenburg’s unusual methods of finding a cure for the disease, and as it comes from a researcher with medical background, it is valuable to her review. Thomas chose this quote not only to add a different perspective on the practices done by Roestenburg, but also because it may have been difficult to correctly paraphrase the scientist’s words without misrepresenting him. She included a quote from a scientists, and explained the rest of the article in her own words, showing a general understanding the article at hand. Another aspect well done is located in the summary as well. Here, Thomas defined difficult scientific terms such as Schistosomiasis, making sure her readers would understand what she was talking about. This allows readers to continue reading her review with the knowledge that Schistosomiasis is a disease, it has a cause and no cure, and how it is spread, without having to look these key facts up online. Finally, Thomas was successful in her connections to society paragraph. Here, she thoughtfully noticed that the reason why European and American researchers aren’t trying to find a cure for Schistosomiasis is because it “does not affect the directly” (Thomas, 1). This highlights a societal issue on whether other countries should get involved with other countries health issues and spend money on finding a cure even if their citizens will not benefit directly from it. Readers have to stop and think about the morally correct answer to this question, involving them in the article.
Although Thomas wrote an amazing review, she had some areas that lacked. For example, in her critique Thomas only wrote one sentence about one aspect she believed the article excelled in. Readers are left with only one good reason why they should read the article. A solution to this could be for Thomas to write another few sentences about the other parts of the article she enjoyed to create a fuller critique paragraph. Secondly, Thomas had a few spelling and grammatical errors that distracted from her review. An example, she wrote “and” instead of “an” in her summary which may confuse readers as to what she is talking about. A solution for this would be for her or a colleague to read over her review and fix her errors.
From this review, I learned that unorthodox methods of finding a cure for a disease sometimes are successful, and that thinking outside of the box can help people find answers to difficult questions. This review stood out to me for the topic of the article it was reviewing, and how Schistosomiasis is being treated by infecting people with it and then trying to cure them. Personally, I would be too scared to participate in these experiments but I admire those who volunteer. This review has changed my perspective on medical studies and the routes scientists travel to cure diseases, even if they are extreme.