Word: influenza
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...immediate targets are herpes, hepatitis and influenza, but the potential is much greater. Last week a group of scientists with the New York State department of health announced an exciting and imaginative application of the genetic-engineering techniques that are transforming modern medicine. Using the sophisticated new cut-and-paste methods of manipulating genes, the researchers were able to transform ordinary smallpox vaccine into vaccines that may be able to prevent the other three diseases. So far the results have been tested in animals only, but Virologist Enzo Paoletti, a senior scientist on the project, is confident that they will...
...than deaths in 1982, what demographers call "a natural increase." The U.S. recorded the largest number of births (3.7 million) since 1970 and the highest birth rate (16 per 1,000 people) since 1971. Deaths (2 million) dropped slightly below the 1981 level, possibly because there were no serious influenza outbreaks in 1982. The 1982 infant mortality rate (11.2 per 1,000 live births) was the lowest ever recorded in the nation. Infants are doing better, says NCHS Demographer Kate Prager, because of the "improvement in medical technology in caring for sick newborns...
Then there are the scourges that have always been with us, the Legionnaire's bacteria that suddenly find an environment in which to flourish anew momentarily, or the influenza virus that undergoes minor mutations to spring forth with renewed vigor. Indeed, of all the potential disease agents looming on the horizon, it is the familiar flu virus that worries Foege the most. "I fully anticipate that possibly in our lifetime we will see another flu strain that is as deadly as 1918. We have not figured out good ways to counter that." The same holds for the most common...
...blemishes on the CDC's record involves an epidemic that never happened. In 1976, swine flu broke out at Fort Dix, N.J., killing one soldier. Health officials worried about the similarity of the virus to one that had caused the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 500,000 Americans. At President Gerald Ford's urging, a $100 million program was rushed into being to immunize people across the country. Not only did no epidemic break out, but 100 or so people came down with a syndrome, apparently connected to the vaccines, that caused partial paralysis. Ninety million unused...
...measure, herpes is an extraordinary bug. "It is the ultimate parasite," declares University of Michigan Microbiologist Charles Shipman. Says Washington, D.C., Urologist Peter Gross: "If you were doing a science-fiction movie, you couldn't invent something better than herpes." What makes it unique is that unlike influenza and other viruses, it survives in the human body. long after an attack has subsided. Once herpes has found its way into your system, says Dr. Harold Kessler, a Chicago specialist in infectious disease, "it's your virus for life...