Word: infective
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...agencies are also dabbling in hacker warfare. The National Security Agency, along with top-secret intelligence units in the Army, Navy and Air Force, has been researching ways to infect enemy computer systems with particularly virulent strains of software viruses that already plague home and office computers. Another type of virus, the logic bomb, would remain dormant in an enemy system until a predetermined time, when it would come to life and begin eating data. Such bombs could attack, for example, computers that run a nation's air-defense system or central bank. The CIA has a clandestine program that...
Scientists, who once believed that Ehrlichia attacked only dogs and horses, now know that at least two species of Ehrlichia can infect humans. One causes HGE, and the other causes a disease called monocytic Ehrlichiosis, a flulike illness first identified in the western hemisphere nine years ago. HGE is spread by the deer tick in Northern states, while monocytic Ehrlichiosis is a mostly Southern syndrome that travels in the Lone Star tick. The disease is found in 30 states, including Texas and Oklahoma. More than 400 cases of monocytic Ehrlichiosis, nine of them fatal, have been documented since...
...study of monkeys infected with a form of AIDS, British researchers have made a small, but potentially very signficant, step toward discovering an AIDS vaccine. TIME Science writer Christine Gorman reports that while the study is important, "a big worry with the type of virus used in the research is you might actually infect patients with AIDS in the course of trying to immunize them...
...South America. But the most insidious of all, of course, is the AIDS virus, HIV. It probably originated in Africa as well, but unlike Ebola, it was ideally suited to spread around the globe. It kills so slowly and leaves victims without symptoms for so long that they can infect many others before dying...
...fact, the Ebola virus is ill-suited to sustaining an epidemic: it kills victims so quickly that they don't have much chance to infect others. Says Henderson: "People who are ill with Ebola are not walking around. They are on their backs." Moreover, the virus is not all that easy to pass along. Unlike the most highly contagious illnesses-tuberculosis or influenza, for example, Ebola can't be transmitted with a sneeze or cough. It's more like AIDS; direct contact with a victim's blood or other body fluids appears to be the only way to catch...