The vaccines we have today are pretty incredible. They've eradicated smallpox, purged rubella from the Americas, and save millions of people each year from dying of diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, and measles. When enough people get vaccinated, infectious diseases can't spread easily and everyone benefits from herd immunity.
The last few years have seen a rise in rare and unknown infectious diseases. The Ebola epidemic may be the most prevalent example in recent times other pathogens such as MERS, avian and pandemic influenzas, and Nipah virus have emerged in human populations. While the causes of these diseases are quite different in nature, they do have one thing in common. They all originated from animals.
Health concerns for people in late 16th century France were a bit different than today. Most people lived in squalid conditions in which infectious diseases ran rampant; life was pretty difficult and short (by the mid-1700s, the average person could expect to live to about 30). But many who were spared consumption or the plague couldn't avoid a health condition that is one of the most common today: heart disease. Archaeologists in France uncovered five embalmed hearts dating back to the late 1500s and early 1600s, several of which showed signs of disease, according to a presentation given yesterday at the meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.
Infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola have constantly been a major threat to public health, and they're likely to become a bigger problem in the future. According to an opinion piece in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, infectious diseases are spreading to new places and new hosts--including humans--with the help of climate change.
Back in 1928, Alexander Fleming, a researcher at St. Mary’s Medical School in London discovered what would become a believed savior against the wrath of infectious diseases: antibiotics. Over the coming decades, the discovery turned into a medical marvel and eventually into an industry. Unfortunately, almost as soon as antibiotics became available commercially during World War II there were concerns thatresistance might emerge.Sadly, while the calls in the literature were clear, there was little action in the community to take heed.
A week after September 11, 2020, letters containing lethal anthrax spores killed five people, and sparked a an FBI investigation that lasted nine years. Since then, bioweapons research has become a multi-billion-dollar industry: scientists work with dangerous biological agents, like anthrax spores and infectious diseases, to come up with a defense against future biological attacks. One problem: the labs are a hot mess.