I do agree with you about malaria and mosquitos. My favorite uncle acquired malaria during the time he was part of the 1st Cavalry in the Philippines, courtesy of the WWII. His was relapsing for the rest of his life. Like yours. However, I don’t like DDT too much either. We now have the science and technology. Are we using it?
OT: My paternal grandad was also in the Philippines in the Cavalry during the war. Only it was in the 7th Cavalry during the Spanish American Wars. He was a farrier.
“You may think it’s butter, but it’s not…”
I got my case in 1991 on a river trip on the Usumacinta river. It makes the border betweem Mexico and Guatemala. I treated each recurring fever with a drug whoes name i don’t recall. It took 6 cycles every 36 to 48 hrs to beat it into submission. When visiting Jamaica in 1995 i relapsed and did 8 cycles that time. No recurrence since. It’s not like any other fever i have ever had. I could sweat like i am in 110 degree heat and at the same time shiver like it’s 32 degrees. And i had hallucinations. And this was the "weak’ version of malaria.
It’s nasty
Sadly my reflex will still be to smack the little buggers flat. I hate them and that is not likely to change any time soon. Had you been as ill as I was from malaria you would begin to understand. Malaria is brutal. It kills kids by the thousands in Africa annually. There are several different strains of the disease as well and some are incredibly bad. And malaria is only one of lots of diseases carried by these pests, West Nile virus, Zika virus, Chikungunya virus and dengue fever are some others. I do not recommend getting any of them.
Some vaccines should be delivered on a particular timed schedule and not randomly by skeeter bite. How does one regulate a mosquito bite to be annually or every 3 to 6 months?
Is this a trick by someone to boost the sale of bugspray to right wingers?
It’s hard for me to think of mosquito slobber (thereby delivering the plasmodium falciparum bug) as a good thing
I know your story, and yes, the disease is absolutely as bad as you portray. I am glad that you have not had a recurrence in 25 years, and I hope it is forever! 
ETA: By all the wonderful responses, it is clear we haven’t quite figured out the specifics, yet.
Why have we denigrated and stopped funding fundamental biological research?
My advice to you is to drink as many gin and tonics as possible on a regular basis, just in case – strictly for medicinal purposes, of course, as a quinine-delivery system.
(And I feel qualified to offer this unsolicited medical advice, because I once watched a couple of “Marcus Welby, MD” reruns, so I know what I’m talking about.)
“Why have we denigrated and stopped funding fundamental biological research” you say??
GOOBERS IN GOVERNMENT!!
The last ten years of my career centered on early detection of ovarian cancer. The first 3 plus decades I spent delving deep into the biology and functioning of the ovary. Getting funding from goobers was akin to blood from cement. We had created a sort of small diameter flexible tube with a lens like device on the end with which we could look millimeters deep in an ovary and see abnormal cells via optical coherence tomography. The goobers said this was “too esoteric” to get funded. After all it is of interest to only half our population ya know…
Because of idiot GOPers who controlled granting sources… i gave up and retired. My partner in this refused to quit. She is younger than me and has carried the work on and she has vastly improved the tech and the crude device we initially created out of bits in the lab we had on hand at the beginning. It’s a comfort to know that eventually this will be able to be used as an out patient in a doctor’s office. Ovarian cancer killed my mother so i made chasing ovarian cancer my career choice.
Republicans in many cases see no value in science. I don’t get that at all.
I gave up as well. But, honestly, it wasn’t just Goobers that failed us. I left corporate and academic medicine when it became clear there was no longer support for grants and research into the treatments and the diseases that affected people no longer “in vogue.” It was not by my choice. It was because I was RIFFED. Reduction in force. Corporate $$ Academic Medicine. Much more money spent in hiring “Grant Writers” than in those of us who taught and did the basic, bench and applied/clinical research. I was so sorry to leave a career’s work in ethics, in underserved populations, research that I absolutely loved, because of federal government’s lack of support for research, and big pharma’s control of medical priorities, and control of CME and the FDA, and the priorities in HHS and CDC and Medicare and Medicaid during Republican control of so much of Federal Government.
You and I, both, have always considered ethics, science, and humanism, as our lodestars, our guiding inspirations… We decided long ago, in our early years, that science was the way forward. I cannot honor you enough in your life choice, and your vocation. I think you know that I am with you, brother.
As for others, who do not share those values:
I, also, don’t get that at all. Those who do not value science and education are totally lost. We need to change their world. If we don’t, we are forever lost and doomed.
Deep Bow, 
I am humbled by your kind words. I began my career pretty much in anger at cancer for stealing my mother at 57 years of age, I watched her lose her ovaries and uterus, then a breast, and then a lung, and chem therapy of the 1960’s type. And I watched her last breaths as she died. I vowed to myself to understand as best I could, how the ovary works in deep detail and then how to detect cancer early in that organ. I wanted no one ever to suffer the way my mom did.
So we now know the exact date of her head injury.
Now, you humble me. I have always questioned the “why’s.” Why me, what others, why NOT others… Life has always been unfair, as far as I was concerned.
I always trusted the “scientific method,” and I know you did as well. I learned that as a Biology/maybe premed college student, working in a very busy college ER. And, as a child trying to learn why the world was the way it was.
So, brother (of my choice!) there is so much more to honor in you, than in myself. I, too, though, have never wanted for anyone to suffer what I, or anyone else (including you or your mom or family) have suffered the way they have. I know in my heart that you feel the same. And, I also know that that is how you lived and practiced your entire life, and not just because of your mother’s disease. You were, at a very early age, who you were bound to become.
Quinine used to be very effective for malaria, and for leg cramps and spasms, up until the last 20 years or so ago, when the good stuff was taken off the market. We all know full well that Gin and Tonic drinks (from the years of Brits in India wanting to insure their immunity to Malaria) were invented by them and then became popular here (they are great!, I prefer Plymouth Gin, the best Tonic you can find, and small key limes, in ours.) But – Big Pharma and Modern Medicine pretty much ended that “Tonic Water” formulary in this country. Mr. Hatmama, suffering from tremendous leg cramps and leg neuropathy (from the Gulf War, in 1991, and the subsequent American wars in the Sand Boxes of the Middle East,) had great relief from Quinine pills, and/or Tonic Water, at close to 500 mg in the therapeutic dose of quinine. Big Pharma (who could not make any money from quinine, a natural substance, henceforth, not patentable by them, got the FDA to ban them (because, as they cited, potentially deadly side effects, including blood problems, and “heart rhythm disturbances”. Of which there were mostly none…)
(While I am not a biochemist, I am confident in my assessment of both the effectiveness and safety of quinine, in small medicinal dosages, in relieving leg spasms and cramps, and also its libational quality in a fine cocktail, now and then. And the key limes are a proven and an essential preventive against scurvy. ) The alcohol in your drink is the most harmful part of the drink…
She nailed the Sleazy Six.
But so lovely to see Justice Jackson there!
we prepared and hunkered down…
for years, some have advocated for denying biulding permits on these barrier islands and beaches…IAN has given us something ‘real’ to work with.
A good summary of just how bad this term could be for all of us.