Asthma Mystery Solved

For many years, scientists have been puzzling over clusters of childhood asthma, which correlate strongly with poverty. As the New York Times puts it, "Up to one-third of children living in inner-city public housing have allergic asthma." Many theories have been advanced, from nutritional explanations, to the higher rate of smoking among residents of inner-city housing projects, to the fact that most children in public housing spend more time indoors (for safety reasons) than their suburban counterparts.

A team of scientists from the Boston University School of Medicine decided to solve the debate once and for all. Forsaking the standard bench tools of genetically modified mice and proteins from homogenized egg white cultures, they traveled to several housing projects with a vacuum cleaner. They sucked up actual dust bunnies from actual low income houses, and returned to the lab with a canister full of the actual allergens.

It's hard to believe what a revolutionary move this was. It seems so obvious in hindsight. But then again, all of the best revolutionary moves DO seem obvious in hindsight.

Back at the lab, the scientists hydrated and spun the dust bunnies and separated out all of the contents by volume. By far the most significant source of proteins (i.e. allergens) in the sample came from cockroaches. The scientists injected cockroach proteins into mice, then exposed those mice to dried cockroach dust, and observed that the mice had asthmatic reactions. In other words, by exposing the mice to cockroach proteins, the scientists gave the mice a cockroach allergy. And furthermore, that allergy then developed into asthma.

(Of course, being the soft hearted animal lover that I am, I can't help but wonder if the researchers then gave the wheezing mice wee little inhalers to use.)

Scientists worldwide are lauding this result, along with its unorthodox but perfectly sensible research methods. Much noise is being made about choosing which medicines to best address the cockroach allergy symptoms in children, and how to make them affordable.

I have a solution which is also unorthodox, but perfectly sensible. How about if we get rid of the cockroaches in public housing? Doesn't that seem like a nicer, better, more effective solution than paying millions of dollars in state subsidized medication funding? And better than pumping children full of medicine?

There seems to be a public perception that people who live in public housing deserve to live with cockroaches. And that for public housing projects, it is somehow impossible to eliminate the cockroaches. It would be difficult, yes. But surely not impossible. Billions of people across the country live without the constant presence of cockroaches - surely our most desperate and afflicted population deserves the same courtesy.

It behooves us to address this issue from the cockroach angle, not just as a matter of public health, but human decency. Childhood asthma maps turn out to be not just a map of poverty, but a map of cockroach infestation as well. We can fix this. We should fix this. No one should have to live like that, regardless of their financial circumstances.