Word: viruses
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...This year, health workers are the closest they have ever been to eradicating polio?a virus that in 1988 was paralyzing 350,000 children a year?largely due to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of volunteers like Begum participating in a global vaccination program. In 2003, only 784 cases were reported worldwide. But a recent surge of new infections in Africa is raising fears that wiping out the disease may be just beyond humanity's grasp. Three years ago, Africa was on track to meet the World Health Organization's (WHO) objective of a polio-free planet...
...Although the virus that causes polio is highly contagious, bringing it under control is relatively straightforward because a cheap vaccine has long been available. "There is no magic to this," says Dr. Tumseh Salah, who is managing the Swat Valley vaccination program. "You immunize enough kids, and you can stop the virus." Indeed, the eradication program has been a spectacular success. In its 16 years of operation, the number of countries where polio remains a chronic problem has fallen from 125 to just six: Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. (In all of Asia, just 34 cases were reported...
...SARS in April. Li quit after a government investigation found that his mismanagement facilitated a mini-outbreak of the respiratory disease in one of his agency's labs, which eventually killed the mother of a graduate student who worked at the lab and who was exposed to the virus...
...Signals An antivirus firm in Moscow claimed to have picked up the world's first cell-phone worm. While the "Cabir" virus is harmless, experts warned that more malicious bugs may follow...
...books) are so moronic that they practically disprove Darwin. But Surowiecki does not claim collective perfection, only the effectiveness of a diversity of individual intelligences--like those hundreds of scientists at labs all over the world who, without overall supervision but sharing their data, succeeded in isolating the SARS virus in only a matter of weeks. The Wisdom of Crowds is a subtly intelligent book that's fun to argue with: if it becomes a best seller, that will of course confirm the author's thesis...