Infectious disease

Reconstructing Viruses

Arts, Culture & Media

Why do scientists want to recreate viral monsters like the 1918 Spanish flu? And if they do, should they be allowed to publish the instructions?

A man washes his hands at a facility outside the Green Pharmacy, Area 8, in Abuja, Nigeria on September 1, 2014.

Precautions against Ebola are simple, but hard to guarantee every single time

Health

A Liberian describes the hard reality of Ebola: ‘You’re running even from people you love’

Medicine
The World

Viruses At The Movies

Arts, Culture & Media
The World

Tracking Pandemics by Computer

The Origin of AIDS: 60 Years Before the First Documented Case

By most accounts, the history of AIDS begins sometime in the late 1970s, before the first official cases were diagnosed in 1981 among a handful of gay men. But a striking new book by Dr. Jacques Pépin, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, upends medical history. In “The Origins of […]

Little-Known Disease Rinderpest is Eliminated

For the second time in history, an infectious disease has been eradicated. In 1979, smallpox was the first disease to be successfully wiped away. Now, a little-known disease called rinderpest is now joining the list. Rinderpest means “cattle plague” in German, and is a relative of the measles virus that infects cattle, deer, and other […]

Evolutionary Medicine: Rethinking the Origins of Disease

Author Marc Lappé suggests an approach to healing which relies less on chemical drugs and more on the body’s natural defenses. He’s convinced that the human impact on the natural world is at the root of many new strains of infectious diseases which are filling our hospitals, including AIDS and tuberculosis. This program originally aired […]

Evolutionary Medicine: Rethinking the Origins of Disease

Author Marc Lappé suggests an approach to healing which relies less on chemical drugs and more on the body’s natural defenses. He’s convinced that the human impact on the natural world is at the root of many new strains of infectious diseases which are filling our hospital, including AIDS and tuberculosis.

Hunting for the Next Pandemic

Many of the major infectious diseases that plague humans- like cholera, small pox and AIDS- first evolved in animals. And at some point these diseases all made the leap from animals to people. Traditional medicine has approached the problem by searching f