PBS: How a Worm Gave the South a Bad Name

[forestglip]

How a Worm Gave the South a Bad Name
By Rachel Nuwer
April 27, 2016

"For more than three centuries, a plague of unshakable lethargy blanketed the American South.

It began with “ground itch,” a prickly tingling in the tender webs between the toes, which was soon followed by a dry cough. Weeks later, victims succumbed to an insatiable exhaustion and an impenetrable haziness of the mind that some called stupidity. Adults neglected their fields and children grew pale and listless. Victims developed grossly distended bellies and “angel wings”—emaciated shoulder blades accentuated by hunching. All gazed out dully from sunken sockets with a telltale “fish-eye” stare.

The culprit behind “the germ of laziness,” as the South’s affliction was sometimes called, was Necator americanus —the American murderer. Better known today as the hookworm, millions of those bloodsucking parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of populations stretching from southeastern Texas to West Virginia. Hookworms stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy, moronic Southerners.

While the South eventually rid itself of hookworms, those parasites cost the region decades of development and bred widespread misconception about the people who lived there. Yet hookworm has not been defeated for good. Today, hundreds of millions of people in dozens of nations around the world suffer from hookworm infection. The South’s experience, measured in both its successes and pitfalls, can provide a rough blueprint of how to seek out and quash this “American murderer”—no matter where it is found around the world."

 

[Hutan]

In 1902, Charles W. Stiles, a medical zoologist from New York, finally dragged the hookworm out of hiding. Stiles had been tasked by the Department of Agriculture to help farmers keep their animals healthy, but he became fascinated with solving the riddle of the South’s stunted, exhausted workers. He began collecting samples and soon identified the tiny culprit behind the workers’ debilities. “He was one of these people who becomes obsessed with something that few others acknowledge or recognize,” says John Ettling, president of the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh and author of The Germ of Laziness . “He wouldn’t let it go.”

Stiles was convinced that ridding the South of hookworms would make the region more productive, but local doctors would not listen, dismissing him as arrogant or pointing out that his expertise was in animals, not people. “He was an interesting guy, but testy and hard to like,” Ettling says. “He didn’t suffer fools.”

Word of Stiles and his discovery, however, soon reached John D. Rockefeller, who was actively looking for a certain type of philanthropy project. Hookworms fit the bill. “Rockefeller didn’t want to put money into things that would bring the American capital system into question, like income inequality,” Ettling says. “Health, on the other hand, is not controversial: no one wants their kids growing up sick.”

Southerners, however, were not on board in the beginning. The idea of hookworms—parasites that live within the body and are contracted by direct contact with feces—was unseemly, and the South, unsurprisingly, wanted no association with such a disease. Indeed, some Southerners took the suggestion of hookworms as a personal affront, Ettling says, demanding, “Where was the hookworm when it took three Yankees to take out one Rebel boy in the War?” Others proclaimed that Rockefeller was trying to further humiliate the South and that his money wasn’t wanted.

 

[rvallee]

Uh. Have they considered calling them mild and endemic, insisting that parasites don't cause illnesses like that?

It doesn't work but it's still the preferred cover up method.

Stiles was convinced that ridding the South of hookworms would make the region more productive, but local doctors would not listen, dismissing him as arrogant or pointing out that his expertise was in animals, not people.

Uh, I guess they did try that.

Health, on the other hand, is not controversial: no one wants their kids growing up sick

Haha. Good one. I mean, sure, no one wants that, they just call it... laziness. Technology changes what humans can do, but humans don't change.