Brain Eating Omeoba

People probably had more pressing matters to research. Although it did cause deaths, the numbers were relatively smaller compared to other things killing more people. The fact that it only killed 23 people in 9 years means that there wasn't an urgency to find out more ways to stop it.The only reason it's been getting more attention is because it has killed six people recently.
Interesting, but not super interesting.
Try this on for natural killers!
http://www.neatorama.com/2007/05/21/the ... h-century/

 

Maybe you should read the article a little more carefully.

They rarely survive, but the fact that he said there is a little chance of survival, means that there have been people surviving.

I never said that was your point. That was my point. More research is done on more pressing matters. People try to cure diseases that will cause more deaths in the time they are finding a cure. An example of prioritizing is an emergency ward in hospitals. You have to prioritize what's more important. A few deaths by brain eating amoeba? Or a few thousand deaths by another disease? I'm not trying to belittle the taking of their lives, it is tragic, but there are more dangerous fatal diseases. 23 deaths in 9 years is not much incentive to spend money and research on a cure. You need a lot of money for research as well as testing. In a biotechnology company, if they are trying to find a cure for it, they would need money for research as well as testing. Usually, they will get money from investors, who expect something to come out of it, that is, more money once the product is released. The biotechnology companies wouldn't be able to get money to fund for the research because the investors wouldn't see market for it. That's the way it has been working. You might not care if it has only been one death, but other people do. They will want to invest their money in something that will stop more deaths, or will cure more diseases. If research does come from it, it would have to be from some kind hearted soul that is willing to invest the money with little or no return, or the research is government funded. That's the way the world works.
It's not like anyone can get infected, it isn't contagious, or something we're all going to die of. There isn't going to be a pandemic of brain eating amoeba. You have to swim in certain lakes or not take care of your pools. The water has to shoot up your nose so the amoeba can attach to your olfactory nerves. I could swim in a lake with the amoeba, and come out fine. If you want to cause less deaths, you could have the authorities test the water for these amoeba, or better yet, just wear nose plugs. Water then wouldn't be able to go up their nose, and they wouldn't die from brain eating amoeba. That would save a lot of time and money instead of research. Preventing a person from getting it in the first place would be better. So maybe now that people are aware of it, they should get their kids to wear nose plugs.
But I reckon it should get some attention now, because if climate change is going to raise the temperatures of the water so the amoeba can thrive, then those deaths would be more frequent, which they have been. If there is a way to find a cure for those people who do become infected, that would be great, but as long as you are careful where you swim and wear a nose plug, you shouldn't have to look for one.
The media have definitely made a hype about the story. If the death of the young boy had been by something less sensational, like meningitis, you may get a mention, but the fact that it's "BRAIN EATING AMOEBA" makes it more interesting and frightening.
I don't think someone has made a thread on this forum about something like "MENINGITIS". Which has caused more deaths and has similar symptoms. It has caused an average of 849 deaths in America alone, and also affects young children. There is no cure for the most common and deadliest strain. But scientists are researching ways to cure it, as they have spent the time to map out the genome for it, and are now looking for possible vaccine options. As tragic as the deaths of the 6 people killed by the amoeba have been, there are more dangerous diseases out there causing more deaths that deserve more attention.

 

It's not as simple as snapping your fingers. You need to be able to make the right pitch. You need to explain what you are researching, and what you are going to do with the money. You need to make a case, on even why the person would donate money. They're not going to throw money at you. They shouldn't be completely ignored, but money is one of the biggest factors in initiating research, and it takes a lot of effort to get it.

Since the paper on the Naegleria fowleri was published in 1960, I would assume they knew how it infected a person. The American Governments can't be aware of every single area that the amoeba would reside in. If they knew that, then i'm sure they would have acted faster. But can you blame the governments for not acting fast enough? The risk of getting the amoeba is one in 2.6 million exposures. It wasn't high enough seeing the causes of other deaths. But the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and due to the recent deaths people have taken more action against it. And maybe if you just read that one article you wouldn't have seen it being mentioned. Because there haven't been any recent newspaper articles on it since the deaths this year that sparked all the warnings.

No, it wouldn't take away more time to cure AIDS. Those two are totally unrelated things. AIDS is caused by a virus. A very different thing to the water-borne amoeba. Different scientists would research it. But I would donate money towards looking for a cure for HIV or meningitis rather than the cure for the Naegleria fowleri. And they would have to place a lot more warnings for many other things. They would have to print out a whole book on things to be careful of when going out on a swim. And that amoeba wouldn't be in the first few pages either. Maybe there should have been more warnings and more testing. But then there are a lot of should haves and could haves. Maybe if vaccines were invented earlier, millions of people could have survived. But it's the deaths that causes the need for more research. Maybe if a lot more people died from the amoeba in the 1960s, it would have illicited a response to find a cure.

Well, maybe they were warned in the 1960s, when the paper on the amoeba was published. But since there was only a .00003% chance of catching it, if you are swimming in a known infected area, people didn't bother. You are more likely to die from a bee sting, or death by lightning. Maybe they should have a section in the newspaper on things to look out for. Don't eat burnt toast. The burnt part could cause cancer. Where a bike helmet when skate boarding. Where a nose plug when swimming in lakes. Burnt food such as barbequed sausages or before mentioned toast has been found to be carcinogenic. Does everybody know that? Does it stop people from eating it? Should the government ban bbqs?
And even if they researched the brain eating amoeba back in the 1960s when it was first discovered. Who is to say they could have gotten any further? Technology has greatly developed in the past decades, and while there is treatment for the amoeba, only 8 people have survived. In the present, with all our past knowledge of amoebas, as well as the paper written on that specific flesh eating virus, we still can't find a 100% or even a 10% chance of survival after treatment.
And I would say, we should decrease global warming.

Look, it is too late to look at what could have been. There are researchers on the case of the amoeba. It's not a bug, not even an arthropod.
Even if it does become more active, once again it would be cheaper and more effective for them to wear nose plugs. And once again, you would be more worried about the other effects of global warming. Polar bears dying out, only male turtles being born. Decreased agricultural yields, food poisoning bacteria that thrive in warmer weather, rising sea levels causing coastal floodings, and well... too many other things to mention. If a bear is attacking you, and it has fleas, and the fleas are biting you, what would you attend to first? The bear or the fleas? No, it isn't an AND situation. The fleas do damage, but it isn't comparable to the bear.
We could look to the past, and say yes, maybe they could have done more to stop those deaths, but it was those deaths that made people more aware and look into the amoeba more. Their lives weren't wasted.
So if global warming does get worse, it is a good thing that we have researched to stop that amoeba. So we all wear nose plugs. It's a simple thing. And, the governments and media have warned the states to wear them when swimming in certain areas. You can complain about it not being done in the past, but that is the past, you can't change it. There are a lot of things we should have done in the past, and complain about, but the fact is you can't change it. You should be happy now that there are thorough warnings and research being done on it. They aren't ignoring it anymore