I will find out...and let you know. Malaria unfortunately is rarely discussed in the US due to the fact that it practically does not exist here. so it is never economically important so corporations would rather invest in viagra because there are many rich old men out there who need to get it up. finding better and more definitve cures for malaria is useless cause even if they do find cures the poor bastards in third world countries woudln't be able to afford to buy them...so fuck them...right? that's how the world works I guess...capitalism, where the bottom line is..well money.

I wanted to answer this earlier and totally forgot about it..but as you know, all microbiology and all biology in general uses the tenets of evolution for research. The very foundation of biological research entails evolutionary biology at one level or another. I mean, for example: bacterial resistance to antibiotics.....if you place a (let's call it X) bacteria on a plate...apply antibiotics, some of the bacteria will not die, and if you let it grow, you will soon find out that it has developed a resistance to that antibiotic. Selective pressures, killed off the bacteria that was susceptible to antibiotics but the one that lived, is now not susceptible to antibiotics anymore. This is natural selection at it's finest...

Another, more specific example is Klebsiella pneumoniae, an emerging infectious disease mainly as a nosocomial infection in hospitals. Did you know that this bacteria normally colonizes your nasopharynx and intestinal tract by about 5-30% of the population, however, there are studies whcih show a positive correlation between the lenght of time you stay at a hospital with the amount of people hwo have K. pneuominae; the percentatge increased to 77%. Studies show that the bacteria is very common in hospital environment because it has become anti-biotic resistant and spreads from patient to patient and from doctor to patient much more easily. Again, natural selection.....

If you dont' want to believe in natural selection and evolution, then you should not reap the benefits of medicine, and again, you would die from disease as the rest of us move forward, even though I hate comparing darwinism to social darwinism. because the two are completely different.

After visiting the rain forests in South America, I kind of had a different take on malaria and other tropical disease.

Right now, these diseases act as a defence against humans completely destroying these ecosystems, just about the only defence. So if there is a cure/vaccine for malaria, dengue, etc... and other disease, doesn't this mean the rain forests are in even more jeopardy from human encroachment? You are essentially making the rainforests of the world safe for human habitation, thereby enabling their destruction.

So shouldn't we as atheists support charities and movements toward reducing human population growth before curing diseases that will only lead to more environmental destruction?