Word: viruses
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There's nothing like an outbreak of Ebola virus to guarantee screaming headlines. That's largely due to the mid-1990s bestseller The Hot Zone, which described the disease's horrifying course in gruesome detail, leaving many readers to believe that Ebola posed a looming threat to human existence. The truth is, however, that since the first recorded human cases in the 1970s, only a few hundred people have died from it. Of all the diseases you need to be afraid of, Ebola is near the bottom of the list. Unless, that is, you're a gorilla. Over the past...
...service announcements won't exactly bring gorillas to a vaccination center where the entire population can be inoculated. Instead, epidemiologists can use selective-vaccination techniques, which work with human communities when universal vaccination isn't practical. Just inoculate a few gorilla groups along the infection chain, and when the virus reaches them, it is stopped cold. "We're not talking about massive vaccination anymore," says Walsh. "We're talking about getting a vaccine into key gorilla populations." And the cost? Perhaps as little as $2 million - chump change, Walsh calls it, to save our closest evolutionary kin from extinction...
...transmitted by contact with body fluids, and it's rapidly fatal. When people get it, they become so sick so fast--their organs literally liquefy--that others try to stay away from them. What's more, the mere fact of their quick immobility means they can't carry the virus very far. Ebola usually burns through an isolated village or community and then has nowhere else...
There's nothing like an outbreak of Ebola virus to guarantee screaming headlines. That's largely due to the mid-1990s bestseller The Hot Zone, which described the disease's horrifying course in gruesome detail, leaving many readers to believe that Ebola posed a looming threat to human existence. The truth is, however, that since the first recorded human cases in the 1970s, only a few hundred people have died from it. Of all the diseases you need to be afraid of, Ebola is near the bottom of the list...
...service announcements won't exactly bring gorillas to a vaccination center where the entire population can be inoculated. Instead, epidemiologists can use selective-vaccination techniques, which work with human communities when universal vaccination isn't practical. Just inoculate a few gorilla groups along the infection chain, and when the virus reaches them, it is stopped cold...