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Vocabulary > Health > Diseases > Bacteria, bug, virus
Andy Singer
No Exit
Cagle / Politicalcartoons.com
18 December 2006
germs
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/07/us-bacteria-superbugs-india-idUSTRE7357W920110407
bacteria
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/07/antibiotic-resistance-bacteria
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-04-chicken-bacteria_x.htm
legionella bacteria
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2046114,00.html
NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase) 1 positive bacteria /
super superbugs
NDM 1, or New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1,
makes bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics,
including the most powerful
class, called carbapenems.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/07/us-bacteria-superbugs-india-idUSTRE7357W920110407
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/11/antibiotics-efficiency-drug-resistant-bacteria
antibiotic resistance / misuse of antibiotics / drug-resistant
bacteria
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/07/us-bacteria-superbugs-india-idUSTRE7357W920110407
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/07/antibiotic-resistance-bacteria
drug resistance
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/drug-resistance
antibiotics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/antibiotics
virus
viral diseases > polio, hepatitis and mononucleosis
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/education/26mccollum.html
James Joseph Rahal
USA 1933-2011
infectious-disease specialist who raised early alarms
about the rise of drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals,
and who emerged as a leading expert in the treatment of West Nile virus
after the Queens community where he worked
became the epicenter of a deadly outbreak in 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/nyregion/dr-james-rahal-infectious-disease-expert-dies-at-77.html
Baruch Samuel Blumberg
USA
1925-2011
Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and medical anthropologist
who discovered the hepatitis B virus,
showed that it could cause liver cancer
and then helped develop a powerful vaccine to fight it, saving millions of lives
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/health/07blumberg.html
strain
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1459208,00.html
the spread of the virus
virologist > Robert Merritt Chanock
1924-2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/health/05chanock.html
bacterium
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/health/05chanock.html
plague
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2038721,00.html
spread
carry
the disease
stem
infectious diseases
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/opinion/contagion-puts-a-focus-on-infectious-diseases.html
contagion
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/opinion/contagion-puts-a-focus-on-infectious-diseases.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/opinion/the-real-threat-of-contagion.html
epidemic
pandemic
be tested
for...
be treated
with...
take the
utmost precautions and preparations
bug
http://society.guardian.co.uk/mrsa/story/0,,1881830,00.html
http://society.guardian.co.uk/nhsperformance/story/0,8150,1499200,00.html
stomach bug / vomiting virus
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/04/health.nhs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/03/health
superbug
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/health/policy/06germ.html
hospital
superbug
superbug >
hospital-acquired bacterium Clostridium difficile
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2637166.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2470379.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2253212.ece
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2188711,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/page/0,,2188837,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2188456,00.html
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jackie_ashley/2007/10/a_local_infection.html
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1828141,00.html
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,7890,1557546,00.html
bacterium > MRSA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2032591,00.html
The Real Threat of ‘Contagion’
September 11, 2011
The New York Times
By W. IAN LIPKIN
I ADMIT I was wary when I was
approached, late in 2008, about working on a movie with the director Steven
Soderbergh about a flulike pandemic. It seemed that every few years a filmmaker
imagined a world in which a virus transformed humans into flesh-eating zombies,
or scientists discovered and delivered the cure for a lethal infectious disease
in an impossibly short period of time.
Moviegoers might find fantasies like these entertaining, but for a microbe
hunter like me, who spends his days trying to identify the viruses that cause
dangerous diseases, the truth about the potential of global outbreaks is
gripping enough.
Then I discovered that Mr. Soderbergh and the screenwriter on the project, Scott
Z. Burns, agreed with me. They were determined to make a movie — “Contagion,”
which opened this weekend — that didn’t distort reality but did convey the risks
that we all face from emerging infectious diseases.
Those risks are very real — and are increasing drastically. More than
three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases originate when microbes jump
from wildlife to humans. Our vulnerability to such diseases has been heightened
by the growth in international travel and the globalization of food production.
In addition, deforestation and urbanization continue to displace wildlife,
increasing the probability that wild creatures will come in contact with
domesticated animals and humans.
When I was a kid, the launching of Sputnik made us aware that the United States
was falling behind the Soviet Union in the race for space. Now all of us are in
a battle that is potentially devastating, only it is not against another
country, but against microbes. Could a movie like “Contagion” be an effective
vehicle for sounding the alarm?
In the hope that it would, I signed on as a paid technical consultant on the
film. The first order of business was a casting call for the virus itself.
Together with my team at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia
University’s Mailman School of Public Health, I devised the imaginary virus that
wreaks havoc in the film. We used as our inspiration the Nipah virus, which in
Malaysia in the late 1990s jumped from bats to pigs to humans, causing
respiratory disease and encephalitis and resulting in more than 100 deaths
before it was contained by quarantine.
My team built a 3-D model of our virus and then worked out how it would spread
and evolve, how it would be discovered, how the public health and medical
communities and governments would respond regionally and internationally, how
vaccines would be developed and distributed. In the film, it takes the lives of
millions of people.
Is this fiction? Yes. Is it real? Absolutely. During the SARS outbreak of 2003,
the first pandemic of the 21st century, I flew to Beijing at the invitation of
the Chinese government to help address the situation there. My memories of
deserted streets, food and supply shortages, and political instability are
reflected in scenes in “Contagion.” I hope the public and our lawmakers will see
the movie as a cautionary tale. Pandemics have happened before. And they will
happen again.
What can we do to prepare ourselves? A presidential directive in 2007 led to the
establishment of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee, at the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to assess our biosurveillance
capabilities and make recommendations for improving detection, prevention and
management of biohazards. The subcommittee, which includes representatives from
federal, state and local agencies, academia and industry (and on which I serve
as co-chairman), has issued reports that provide a road map for steps we have to
take to protect our future.
First, we need to recognize that our public health system is underfinanced and
overwhelmed. We must invest in sensitive, inexpensive diagnostic tests and
better ways of manufacturing and distributing drugs and vaccines. Although new
technology now allows us to design many vaccines in days, manufacturing
strategies for influenza vaccines have not changed in decades. Some experts will
say that the time frame within which “Contagion” introduces the film’s MEV-1
vaccine is unrealistically short; however, it need not be so. We can and must
reduce the several months required to create and test a vaccine before beginning
large-scale production and distribution.
Second, more and better coordination is needed among many local, federal and
international agencies. Joint effort is required to monitor human, animal and
environmental health, optimize electronic health records, mine nontraditional
data sources like the Internet for early signs of outbreaks and invest in a
state-of-the-art work force.
“Contagion” makes the case that scientists and public health professionals who
put themselves on the line to fight infectious diseases are heroes. I hope that,
like Sputnik, it will inspire young people to pursue these careers and help the
rest of the country understand the importance of these efforts. It is what the
world urgently needs.
W. Ian Lipkin is a professor of
epidemiology
and a professor of neurology and pathology at Columbia University.
The Real Threat of ‘Contagion’,
NYT, 11.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/opinion/the-real-threat-of-contagion.html
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