Word: pathogenicity
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H1N1 makes clear how vulnerable our interconnected globe is to emerging diseases. As a result of jet travel and international trade, a new pathogen managed to seed itself in more than 20 countries in less than two weeks. But while globalization has its liabilities, it is also a strength because it gives us the tools to create a truly international disease-surveillance system. And the threat of a pandemic should remind us that we must fill the gaps in the creaky U.S. health-care system; during an infectious-disease outbreak, everyone will be at risk. "We live in one world...
...opposed to the current system, which registers only the transmissibility of a new virus, not how deadly it might be. That would be a good idea, although in the early days of a potential pandemic, there may not be time to wait and see how virulent a new pathogen is before alerting the world that it needs to respond...
...they emerge and get vaccines ready in time. But the GISN only tracks human flu, meaning animal flu can slip by undetected. What's more, pigs that carry influenza tend not to die en masse the way flocks of birds do, eliminating the immediate tip-off that a serious pathogen is at large. None of that is Mexico's fault either. In fact, since human tourists and domesticated animals cross into Mexico all the time, there's every reason to believe that the progenitor virus behind the epidemic hitched a ride in one of them...
...rethought one of his most potent metaphors for evolution: the tree of life. It's not that the metaphor is wrong. Scientists regularly reconstruct evolutionary branches today. When a new disease breaks out, for example, the fastest way to figure out what to do is to determine what the pathogen is related...
...human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a pathogen so wily and protean that researchers rarely talk about curing infected patients, focusing instead on treatment and prevention. But in an announcement that caused a flutter of excitement and a wave of prudent skepticism, Berlin-based hematologist Gero Huetter claimed on Thursday that he has cured an HIV infection in a 42-year-old man through a bone-marrow transplant...