Even a Worm Will Turn

This worm is born to travel. It begins life in human lymph, only to seep out of the lymphatic vessels into the grimy fluid that bathes our organs. From there, it drifts into the blood stream. During the day, it keeps to deep veins. Once darkness falls, it migrates up to the skinny veins just under the skin.Then one lucky night, a mosquito will find the sleeping human and feast on its blood. The worm will end up in the insect’s gut and, eventually, in its muscles. It will reach adolescence there, and then travel to the mosquito’s head, stinger and, finally, to the next person the insect bites. From the blood stream, the worm will find its way back to the lymph to mate and, after such a long journey, retire. It will stay there for six to eight years, the rest of its life, and pump out millions of new little worms to embark on the same cross-species adventure.Unfortunately, the health of these worms, called parasitic filarial nematodes, is in direct conflict with that of their human hosts. The worms slowly accumulate inside of people, eventually clogging lymph nodes and causing the extreme swelling, discoloration and deformity known as elephantiasis. More than 120 million people in 72 countries are infected with the disease, formally called lymphatic filariasis, leaving some 40 million incapacitated.Read more at...The Last Word on Nothing, March 2012.