We like to imagine that science is a world of clean answers, with priestly personnel in white coats, emitting perfect outputs, from glass and metal buildings full of blinking lights.
The reality is a mess. A collection of papers published on Wednesday — on one of the most commonly used medical treatments in the world — show just how bad things have become. But they also give hope.
The papers are about deworming pills that kill parasites in the gut, at extremely low cost. In developing countries, battles over the usefulness of these drugs have become so contentious that some people call them “The Worm Wars.”
Every year hundreds of millions of children in the developing world are given deworming tablets, whether they have worms or not. It’s easy to see why this intervention is so appealing: In principle, children’s health, survival, and school performance can improve with a simple pill, given just once a year, costing only 2 cents.
This approach was endorsed by the World Health Organization. A meeting of eminent researchers, including four Nobel Prize winners, listed the medications in the top four most cost-effective interventions worldwide. As part of a publicity stunt at the Davos Summit in 2008, Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, reportedly chased world leaders around the room pretending to be a giant intestinal worm.
Nobody doubts that treating people who have worms is a good idea. More problematic is the idea of treating whole populations of schoolchildren to improve health and school performance....
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