Tissue Helminths: Snails, Rats, Cobras and Parasites in the Brain

In the 1970s Malaysia’s palm oil industry was booming. The country had relied on tin and rubber to fuel its economy when it was still a British colony, but after independence in 1957 it looked around to broaden its economy by adding new products to expand its basket of commodities for export. So the agribusiness widened to include pepper, cocoa, tea, coffee and palm oil. It was the palm oil industry that really took off, as a combination of suitable climate, soil type, cheap labor, good infrastructure and an expanding global market for consumer products all coincided in the 1960s and early 1970s. Palm oil was an inexpensive and versatile ingredient in the manufacture of a constellation of consumer products: cosmetics, soap, shampoo, cooking oil, skin lotion, animal feed, food additive, etc. and it propelled the Malaysian economy into high gear during that period. Therefore new oil palm plantations proliferated rapidly across the coastal flatlands of Peninsular Malaysia.