Pharmacy on a Bicycle

6 A Drop of Vinegar: Solutions for Infectious Diseases

On the surface, David was no match for Goliath. Just a small boy in a tunic, armed only with a slingshot, yet this small boy killed a giant of a man. And so it is with infectious diseases. Minute microbes one cannot even see with the naked eye are able to kill beings much, much larger and, seemingly, more powerful than themselves—human beings like us.

Most often, however, the people they kill are poor and living in developing countries—like the Angolan soldier who contracts HIV and gives it to his wife before he dies of AIDS. Or like the baby from Zimbabwe who is bitten by a mosquito that transmits a parasite that causes a fever, then a seizure, before killing her of malaria. Or like ...