Word: bacterias
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...confident of winning the battle. Not only have many diseases caused by viruses, such as AIDS, proved to be extraordinarily difficult to cure, but even old, easily treated bacterial ailments do not always respond to drugs as they once did. Using marvelous powers of mutation, some strains of bacteria are transforming themselves into new breeds of superbugs that are invulnerable to some or all antibiotics...
...most publicized superbugs are the strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria that have caused outbreaks of the disease in U.S. hospitals and prisons over the past few years. And in a sobering series of articles in the current Science magazine, researchers point out that the problem of drug resistance is not limited to a few germs but spans an entire spectrum of disease-causing microbes, including those responsible for gonorrhea, meningitis, streptococcal pneumonia and staphylococcus infections. "Bacteria are cleverer than men," says Dr. Harold Neu of Columbia University's medical school...
...flying mosquitoes as seals are from buzzards. Not much water is needed: a tablespoon in an old beer can or tire casing is enough to provide a home for 200 of these little air-breathing water worms, but the more water the better. The larvae zip around, feeding on bacteria and bits of vegetation, which they filter through bristles in their mouths. In some species they also eat one another or the larvae of other mosquitoes, a habit the folks at the Mosquito Unit would like to encourage...
Since the bacteria that cause TB spread through the air, they threaten not only AIDS patients but healthy people as well. Those with an intact immune system can usually fight off the infection, but this does not hold true for people who harbor HIV. Until the resurgence of TB, medical personnel who were HIV-positive but still healthy could work on AIDS floors without jeopardizing their own or anyone else's well-being. Now they will face a greater risk of encountering and developing TB. More AIDS patients are thus likely to be treated under quarantine conditions to avoid spreading...
...faster your skin dries after rainfall and the less likely you are to get parasitic fungi and footworms. Fay has already accumulated four nasty footworms, which burrow under the skin until they discover that you are not a pig or elephant -- their proper hosts. The worms then die, but bacteria in the little corpses infect your feet...