Malaria Buzz

The Wall Street Journal has a teaser article by Sonia Shah, who has a new book out on The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years (New York: Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). Although spraying and drugs and other measures have lowered the death rate from malaria, especially since the end of WWII, the parasite and its mosquito vector are incredibly tenacious, and humans, she argues, are part of the problem--we are often way too careless or simply fatalistic (no pun intended) about malaria.