Word: viruses
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...almost all from the developing world, die from diseases that could be easily prevented with a vaccine. For most of us, those needless deaths prick our consciences and motivate us to open our wallets, but they don't threaten our own health. Avian influenza is different. Though the H5N1 virus is spreading and killing mainly in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, the possibility that bird flu could mutate and become a pandemic is a serious threat to us all. That's why Jakarta's fight with the World Health Organization (WHO) over how an avian-flu vaccine should be developed...
...years, countries around the world have shared new flu strains with the WHO, to help scientists track genetic changes in the fast-mutating virus. The WHO uses that information to create a seed strain to drug companies, at no cost, which then manufacture and sell commercial flu vaccines. That process continued with avian flu until late last year, when Indonesia-the country that has suffered the most bird-flu deaths-suddenly stopped sharing virus samples and instead signed an agreement with the U.S. drug company Baxter to provide virus strains in exchange for help in eventually producing its own vaccine...
...founded Liberation Sud, one of the first networks set up by the Resistance, which sought to foil the Nazis during World War II. Before the couple was able to flee to London in 1944, Lucie engineered several of Raymond's escapes from prison--once by smuggling him a virus that enabled him to wriggle away en route to a hospital. The subject of the 1997 hit film Lucie Aubrac, she was given France's highest award, the Legion of Honor, for her work. Aubrac...
...vaccine that could help prevent cancer, she was mildly intrigued. "Cool," she allowed, "but I hate shots." Luckily, she didn't put up much resistance, and so we plunged into the heart of the most heated public-health matter of the moment: vaccinating tweenage girls against a sexually transmitted virus long before (one hopes!) they become sexually active...
...given any time from ages 9 through 26. The idea is to deliver protection before or not long after their "sexual debut." About 40% of girls become infected with HPV within two years of becoming sexually active. By age 50, 80% of women have had the virus at some point, though many have no symptoms, and only a small percentage of infections lead to cancer...