Word: cholerae
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...body fluids containing electrolytes (particularly potassium) that help control heart rhythm can lead to circulatory collapse. Lack of food weakens the body's natural defense system against infection; crowded together with inadequate sanitation and nonexistent medical care, the starving-as the refugee experience proves-become prey to typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis and malaria. The absence of essential vitamins or minerals can also bring on the so-called deficiency diseases: rickets, beriberi and pellagra. Sometimes, the hungry simply lose the will to live...
Only a telegram arrives. It informs the five women that the boy has died of cholera. His body has been cremated...
Rondle's theory grew out of a chance conversation with a pilot friend, who asked if the venting of dirty water from handbasins in aircraft lavatories during flight (a common airline practice) could spread disease-causing bacteria. Intrigued, Rondle decided to investigate. He picked cholera as a potential airborne culprit because public health agencies keep close tabs on the disease. Thus when he traced regular aircraft routes between Calcutta, where cholera is endemic, and Western Europe, he found that the unexplained cholera cases had invariably occurred along or near these pathways...
That suggested a possible link between the disease and planes carrying cholera-infected passengers. But a key question remained: If the cholera bacterium Vibrio cholerae were dumped from altitudes of 30,000 ft., where temperatures are below freezing, could it survive the journey to earth? Rondle and his colleagues simulated such air drops in their lab, subjecting V. cholerae to rapid freezing in droplets of water, followed by a quick thaw. Result: the durable bugs not only survived but actually flourished. Indeed the tests indicated that even a relatively small quantity of bacteria from, for example, an aircraft washbasin could...
Rondle concedes that his bacterial "bombs" are still only theoretical, yet he feels that they bear watching. Says he: "If cholera can be spread even only occasionally by effluent from aircraft, then close investigation should be made of the possibility of other bacteria and viruses being spread in a similar...