Word: ebola
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...Their fear is that of all the diseases in the world today?from SARS to AIDS, anthrax to Ebola?the single microbe with the greatest potential to become, as epidemiologists say, a "slate wiper," is influenza. Previous pandemics, such as the global outbreak of 1918 that killed an estimated 60 million people, have precipitated some of the greatest die-offs in history. We've all had the flu, of course, but those few days off from work with the sniffles are a completely different illness from that caused by a novel influenza against which we have no immunity. Without antiviral...
...epidemic and then never threatened us again--not without the discovery of a vaccine or cure to curtail the microbe. Some diseases, such as chicken pox, gradually become endemic to man and eventually result, if we are lucky, in nothing more than a mild childhood illness. Others, such as Ebola, retreat back to whatever animal reservoir they came from, stalking humanity from their hidden lair, only occasionally lashing out to bloody a village or crash a rural hospital. But diseases do not, as a rule, just go away...
Infectious diseases routinely leap from animals to humans, often with devastating effects. AIDS and Ebola originated in apes, Creutzfeldt-Jakob in cattle, West Nile in birds and SARS in a little-known animal called the palm civet. Last year the exotic-pet trade took a 3-lb. Gambian rat from Africa to Wisconsin, where it infected a prairie dog with monkeypox--the first occurrence in North America. From the prairie dog, it jumped to a human and ultimately to 87 people in six Midwestern states. Increased globalization means these alien diseases are borne around the world with appalling speed. Makes...
...threat of bioterrorism jump-started dormant plans to create reliable vaccines against some of the world's deadliest agents. In October U.S.-government scientists began their first human trial of an experimental vaccine against Ebola, a lethal African virus that triggers severe internal bleeding and kills up to 90% of its victims. Experts have long feared that Ebola could be turned into a devastating bioweapon. Meanwhile, at Harvard, researchers created an anthrax vaccine that, unlike older vaccines, targets both the toxins created by the bacterium and the bug itself...
...epidemic, and then never threatened us again?not without the discovery of a vaccine or cure to curtail the microbe. Some diseases, such as chicken pox, gradually become endemic to man, eventually resulting, if we are lucky, in nothing more than a mild childhood illness. Others, such as Ebola, retreat back to whatever animal reservoir they came from, stalking humanity from their hidden lair, only occasionally lashing out to bloody a village or crash a rural hospital. But diseases don't, as a rule, just go away...