In “The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS”, Edward Hooper claims that HIV-1 was introduced into humans in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1950s. He suggests that the stocks of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) that were being used in clinical trials were produced in cultures of kidney cells …
Poliovirus is the etiologic agent of the paralytic disease known as poliomyelitis. It’s also the virus I’ve worked on for most of my career. The World Health Organization is in the midst of a massive effort to eradicate the disease, an undertaking that has encountered a number of obstacles. In coming posts I’d like to …
Gazette.net has written correctly about a norovirus outbreak: “County health officials said a virus passed from a single contact source caused students attending a conference at the University of Maryland in College Park to become sick over the weekend. “The virus, known as the Norovirus, causes gastroenteritis or stomach flu, and is usually spread through …
So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ’em And so proceed ad infinitum This verse is by Jonathan Swift, the 18th century Irish cleric and satirist. He wrote it about the time that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek began looking through the microscope and discovered …
For the past month or so, a search of Google News for ‘virus’ has yielded mainly articles on computer viruses or West Nile virus. Why are there so many articles on West Nile virus? Summer is the prime season for transmission of this virus, which is spread to humans by mosquitoes. In temperate climates (e.g. …
