Word: flu
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Science fought back against avian flu with a successful test of a new vaccine. In a study of 451 subjects, the preparation caused no significant side effects and produced antibodies at a level that is usually sufficient to protect against common strains of flu--a good sign that it will work against the avian variety too. It's the common strains, of course, that ought to cause us concern, since avian flu has yet to kill anybody in the U.S. and the common flu kills 36,000 each year. Girding for this winter's assault, the Food and Drug Administration...
Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we'd get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong. We agonize over avian flu, which to date has killed precisely no one in the U.S., but have to be cajoled into getting vaccinated for the common flu, which contributes to the deaths of 36,000 Americans each year. We wring our hands over the mad cow pathogen that might be (but almost certainly isn't) in our hamburger and worry far less about...
Ironically, it is increased CDC funding mandated by Congress for high-profile threats like bioterrorism and flu pandemics that has drained money from areas of public health that may actually be more pressing. Among the hardest-hit programs: AIDS prevention (down 19%), tuberculosis control (down 16%) and preventive-health block grants for outbreaks of West Nile disease and other unexpected events (down...
...through your chest. For some Beijing residents, a hacking, lung-ripping cough that leaves the sufferer unwilling to draw a full breath for fear it might set off another bout is as much part of the onset of Fall as red leaves at the Great Wall. Colds and the flu are common all over the world when winter threatens, of course. But this is something special, a by-product of Beijing's putrid air that serves as a painful reminder of how much damage China's invisible menace is wreaking...
...diseases at the World Health Organization; as the WHO's next director-general; in Geneva. A former head of Hong Kong's health department, Chan succeeded Lee Jong Wook, who died of a stroke in May. She was praised for her decisive handling of Hong Kong's H5N1 avian-flu outbreak in 1997. But during the 2003 SARS crisis that killed 299 in the territory, she was criticized for her slow response and her failure to investigate earlier outbreaks of the disease across the border on the Chinese mainland. During her campaign for the WHO's top job, Chan...