# 5674
The old adage is true.
If you build a better mousetrap, sooner or later nature will come up with a better mouse.
Bacteria learn to resist antibiotics, viruses learn to ignore antivirals and drift antigenically to evade vaccines, and eventually your neighbor’s dog learns how to burrow under your fence to get at your prized petunias.
Hence the old saying that Nature always bats last.
Adaptation is the lynchpin of evolutionary survival, often making victories against bacteria, viruses, and other pests fleeting at best.
Today Declan Butler writing for Nature News, brings us details of another battlefront where the pests are making gains against our modern technology; growing insecticide resistance among malarial mosquitoes in Africa.
It’s a good article, so I won’t bother excerpting it. Follow the link to read it in its entirety.
Mosquitoes score in chemical war
Growing resistance is threatening global malaria-control efforts.
For more background on this growing problem, the World Health Organization has produced a 46 page report called The Technical Basis for Coordinated Action Against Insecticide Resistance.
