Medicine: Animalcule Life

Malaria's cause is known: a tiny animalcule injected by a mosquito's sting. But no one knows what makes the disease so hard to cure permanently. Parasitologists think it is because the malaria bug knows how to hide: even when the bloodstream has been cleared by an antimalarial drug, the organism may remain in body tissues, lying low for new attacks. If scientists could grow the parasite in a test tube and find out exactly what makes it tick, they would be well along toward wiping out malaria.

Last week a team of Harvard Medical School researchers reported that they were getting warm. In a paper so important that it got a prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, they announced that they had bred in a test tube two types of animalcules. One causes malaria in monkeys and the other (Plasmodium vivax) in man.

Harvard's Quentin M. Geiman and Ralph W. McKee said that they now know, pretty well, what foods the monkey parasite thrives on—para-aminobenzoic acid (a B complex vitamin), glycerol sodium acetate, certain other vitamins and amino acids. They have also been able to test the effect of antimalarial drugs.

The Harvard men hopefully suggested that their discovery might pay dividends against other diseases; the same technique, they said, could be used to cage, breed and study the deadly trypanosomes that cause African sleeping sickness.