Anabel Maldonado
Ippolito C Even
Current Event #15
February 5th, 2019
Agler, Ellen, and Mojie Crigler. “We Need to Talk about Intestinal Worms.” Scientific American Blog Network, 29 Jan. 2019, blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-need-to-talk-about-intestinal-worms/.
The article “We Need to Talk about Intestinal Worms.” talks about parasites that are planting themselves along human’s intestines. These “worms” (parasites) cause physical and cognitive growth problems. In order to help prevent this dilemma from growing, in 1909, Rockefeller donated 32 shares to help explore health problems such as these in more depth - this organization was called the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease (RSC). This organization resulted in new discoveries and inventions that located and removed the worms. However, to continue to spread awareness the organization has organized TED talks and presentations. In addition to spreading awareness, new inventions have been presented. For instance, according to Agler and Crigler, there are new drugs such as “albendazole and mebendazole can disrupt adult hookworms’ metabolism and reproduction, most often with little to no side effects in the host.” As time passes, the numbers are decreasing… but their are still 1.5 billion people in impoverished areas who are suffering. This number will increase, if our society does not help prevent new hygiene problems from developing in these areas - because they are a main factor that helps these worms develop.
This article is very relevant in our society. Agler and Crigler stated, “In 2019, people infected with hookworm are likely to be among the 1.5 billion most impoverished people in the world.” Luckily, most of us live with a privilege to even have the ability to fix a problem such as this one. All of us could help minimize this disease by raising awareness or donating to impoverished places such as these. If this disease were not as significant, people would not be facing illnesses. In addition, the upcoming generation would be able to use the money that they were saving for a cure, on education for their children. Our “small bubble” needs to recognize that in places such as Africa, people are facing diseases because of their lack of clean water, money, plumbing and much more.
Personally, this was not the most impressive written current event. I think, both Agler and Crigler jumped from topic to topic. I was very lost and confused in certain parts of the article. For instance, they state “Siblings and neighbors, exposed to a smaller pool of parasites, also benefited. Years later, Kremer and Miguel followed up with participants from their original study and found that those who had been dewormed were earning more money.” I think if the writers were to organize their thoughts in similar categories, the reader would be as confused. For instance, they could start their article BRIEFLY and CLEARLY explaining what the disease is, then going into more depth. However, they were somewhat successful! They created a feeling of guilt and determination in the audience. By including detailed numbers of victims, the reader feels determined to spread awareness and help solve this problem!
Clara DeMagalhaes Current Event #16
ReplyDeleteAgler, Ellen, and Mojie Crigler. “We Need to Talk about Intestinal Worms.” Scientific American Blog Network, 29 Jan. 2019, blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-need-to-talk-about-intestinal-worms/.
Anabel’s review of the article “We Need to Talk about Intestinal Worms” was very informative and guided the reader through a good understanding of the topic at hand. One aspect done well is how the way she wrote the summary of the article flows well from each point and it was easy to understand. She explained the article chronologically and made sure to prioritize key information, but did so in a way that made everything simple and easy to read. Another thing that I think she did good on was on how she said the article could be improved. The critique was blunt but also extremely honest and unbiased. Finally, I liked how she incorporated lots of statistics in order to back up her points and to illustrate the severity of this new discovery and the dangers of diabetes. This makes her review much more credible and overall creates a bigger impact on the reader, because specifying the fact that there are 1.5 billion people suffering in impoverished area is a lot more effective than simply saying that “a lot of people are suffering from this crisis”.
However, there are a couple of parts of the review that I think can be improved on. For starters, I believe that in the summary, there should have been more emphasis on how the intestinal worms affect people and the conditions that they develop in. I think that this will help the reader understand what exactly the victims are dealing with. Also, the grammar is fine for the most part but there are enough spelling and grammatical errors to possibly cause confusion in the reader. This can resolved by using a spell check program or proofreading a bit more carefully. Nonetheless, these small flaws hardly dampen the overall good quality of the review.
Raising awareness like this is a good way to help the people who are too impoverished to efficiently help themselves, and will also make finding a cure more prioritized. So far, it’s worked for the better since the article mentioned several drugs that are already being administered to people who suffer from diseases or parasites like these. And like Anabel said in her review, if people living in these conditions have access to proper medicine, then they would have to spend less on medication and put their funds more towards basic needs such as food, shelter, and education. This has also raised my personal awareness on issues like these and encourage me to look more into these subjects.