Lack of common sense here....

[Shadnic]

Hopefully I'm missing some key bit of information that could explain this, but here we go:

Hookworms already have medicinal properties. When bioengineered they could have "special" medicinal properties, and were then bioengineered to be gigantic so more of their stuff could be harvested.

Walter said that these things were bioengineered so that they would specifically only grow in humans. Now here's the big questions: Why do that?!?! Why not cows? Cows are less suspicious to smuggle into a country, cows have more stomachs, cows are larger, cows don't run away or fight back! No body goes looking for missing cows, cows don't have names, cows won't cause trouble, and when you're done harvesting the cow's worms, they could cut up the meat for some extra profit! (I'm just using cows as an example, insert any farm animal here).

Humans seem to be a horrible choice to incubate a deadly health worm, not to mention people going missing is extremely suspicious and it increases their chances of being caught by probably...oh...7000%.

They probably would have gotten away with it for much longer, been able to harvest more worms, and made more money if they had just used some farm animal instead of people...

The only possible argument I could think of is that it would only work in humans, but Walter implied that it was designed to only work in humans...I'm sure whoever designed it is smart enough to get it to work in something else.

[King_Nothing]

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.

It's probably because... uh, well... hmm...

Don't question Fringe. That's all you need to know.

[Montecito]

Why do that?!?! Why not cows?

To have a reason to make this awful episode.

[King_Nothing]

To have a reason to make this awful episode.

We get it, you didn't like this episode. Can we move on, already?

[Montecito]

We get it, you didn't like this episode. Can we move on, already?

Yeah like the explanation in your post was better.

[Xerophytes]

OK... here's my explanation.

Why humans?

- what is a lot easier to transport a human or transport an animal? From what I understand, the people who are being transported to US are illegal immigrants. As we all know, black market like that exist more than importing "illegal animal". It is also less suspicious to have human as an incubator, because they can easily go straight to Ping On Street and to that guy without a problem, that is if they have a correct incubation settings. But unfortunately, that is not the case, that's the flaw of the triad. If animals were used, I'm not sure with this in the case of US, the animals have to undergo checking up by food and drug administration. As such, they will be easily caught.

[Ph8]

OK... here's my explanation.

Why humans?

- what is a lot easier to transport a human or transport an animal? From what I understand, the people who are being transported to US are illegal immigrants. As we all know, black market like that exist more than importing "illegal animal". It is also less suspicious to have human as an incubator, because they can easily go straight to Ping On Street and to that guy without a problem, that is if they have a correct incubation settings. But unfortunately, that is not the case, that's the flaw of the triad. If animals were used, I'm not sure with this in the case of US, the animals have to undergo checking up by food and drug administration. As such, they will be easily caught.

Agree with you pretty much on everything ......Its easier to sneak a Human into the US then it is a large animal. Especially since you can drop a Human off at any point close to land and pretty much get them anywhere. If you had a large animal not only would they go through more checking, but I belive they would pretty much be locked out of the US border as Cowws espcially since the Mad Cow Outbreak are hard to import into the US, if its possible at all.

[Joy]

OK... here's my explanation.

Why humans?

- what is a lot easier to transport a human or transport an animal? From what I understand, the people who are being transported to US are illegal immigrants. As we all know, black market like that exist more than importing "illegal animal". It is also less suspicious to have human as an incubator, because they can easily go straight to Ping On Street and to that guy without a problem, that is if they have a correct incubation settings. But unfortunately, that is not the case, that's the flaw of the triad. If animals were used, I'm not sure with this in the case of US, the animals have to undergo checking up by food and drug administration. As such, they will be easily caught.

That is a very good expanation, however, I agree with the first post it would have been easier with animals. The animals wouldnt have to be transported, they could easily keep the animals on a farm and produce the drugs there to ship out. Actually if someone was willing to pay 1mil for treatments I am sure the FDA would have found a way to make this happen.... even if they used the guise of food stock animals (meaning once the worms are harvested the animals get sent to the butcher's block).

Or maybe they are advocates for PETA.

[gillybee]

Plus the only people who would know that they were missing were their families, with such a high population the Chinese authorities might well see it as a sorted of population control.
The woman paid $1M for the treatment for her son how much would it cost to ship a boat to the US plus the people being smuggled would have paid the triad handsomely for the passage to a new life in America, so for the triad it was very lucrative business.

[xofringe314]

Maybe humans' body temperatures are better for incubation? Or maybe they have less acidic stomach acid?