Viruses are incompetent but smart little things. Unable to make proteins on their own, they hijack ours for their own nefarious purposes. But what if we gave the viruses broken proteins? An incredibly rare genetic disorder in a brother and sister pair does exactly that, making them immune to many classes of viruses—and suggesting new possibilities for antiviral treatments.
If you remember President William Henry Harrison from U.S. history class at all, then you probably remember him as the poor fellow who died from pneumonia a month after delivering his inaugural address in freezing rain. Except was it really pneumonia after all? A New York Times article suggests a different theory, and a cautionary tale against giving long speeches instead turns into one against improper sewage systems.
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Ian Lipkin, world-renowned virus hunter, is often jetting off to far-flung countries—countries in the middle of strange epidemics, that is. From SARS in China to MERS in Saudi Arabia, his lab has discovered or characterized over 500 viruses previously mysterious to humans. But what’s it like working on the frontlines of an epidemic? How do you identify a virus you can’t even see? Gizmodo got in touch with Lipkin to ask some questions about the life of a virus hunter.
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In an article primarily about the potential folly of holding onto stockpiles of smallpox virus for research purposes—a now-eradicated plague that humans no longer have natural immunity to and that would very likely cause a worldwide catastrophe should it escape from the lab—the BBC includes one awesomely horrible detail. Could the frozen bodies of smallpox victims in Siberia, now thawing because of climate change, re-release the virus into the environment and thus start a global pandemic?
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Ah, New York—the sparkling skyline! The bustling streets! The… poop-filled water tanks? According to a new report from The New York Times, the city’s roughly 17,000 water tanks are totally unsanitary and widely unregulated.
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If you view Facebook as a plague on social dynamics, you might not be far wrong. Researchers from Princeton University claim that the social network’s popularity has spread like an infectious disease—but, as we slowly become immune to its charms, it will die out.
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Although medical science has advanced immeasurably in the last century, many preventable diseases still claim lives due to ineffective vaccination programs. This map shows when and where that happens.
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Called the "silent epidemic," a little-known fungal disease called valley fever has become ten times more common in the past decade. Its fungal spores are being spread by dust storms in the American Southwest. Exactly why valley fever suddenly increased has nagged at public health officials, but a piece in The New Yorker suggests something quite prosaic is partially responsible—construction.
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If you want to put on a surgical mask, rubber gloves, goggles, ear muffs and trap yourself in a plastic bubble after watching this terrifying video of how fast an epidemic would spread across the world, well, I’d totally understand. Because it’s crazy fast. Using the world’s air transportation network, theoretical physicists have created a model showing how a disease originating from one city can taint the entire world.
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Starfish may be flexible, but they’re also tough. Yet a mysterious "wasting syndrome" is making starfish from Southern California to Alaska decay while still alive. Populations are being decimated up and down the west coast.
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