The Novel Coronavirus

    Peter Kohama/MCT/Landov, via NPR

There is a novel SARS-like Coronavirus stalking the Middle East.  There have been 10 identified cases since Summer 2012, five of them fatal.  So-far, there have been 5 cases in Saudi Arabia, 2 in Jordan, 2 in the UK (one of them Qatari) and 1 in Germany, also someone from Qatar.  It seems to spread from person to person, but with difficulty.  Scientists think the virus comes from bats.  There is some concern that a mutation might occur that makes the virus much more communicable.  One to keep an eye on.  You know, if you don't have something more immediate to worry about and you are tired of worrying about global warming and asteroids.

One odd thing is that the news outlet covering the outbreak most often is... The Toronto Star.  Not normally known for hard hitting science reporting.  But they have featured every new development on their (web) front page.  Way to go Star!

DNA Trophy Cabinet

      Illustration by Zephyris - GNU Free Documentation License

There's an intriguing article in the Washington Post about remnants of ancient retroviruses found in the human genome.  Over the course of evolution, retroviruses like HIV have stitched themselves into human DNA.  Clearly, these retroviruses have been defeated by our immune systems, or we would not be around to discuss the matter.  However, bits and pieces of these retroviruses remain in our DNA.  Kind of like trophies.  Indeed, some of the functions provided by these viral skeletons have been hijacked by our immune systems as defenses against incoming retroviruses.  Scientists have succeeded in putting the pieces of one retrovirus back together from snippets spread around the genome.  Unfortunately, like all such stories, this one starts out interesting, then peters out.  There is just too much we don't know or understand about the genome.

Dr. Snow's Cholera Map

I've gussied up Dr. Snow's map for ease of reading in a web context.  Click on the image to see the real map at WikiCommons.

British physician John Snow invented the science of epidemiology with this map.  It shows the location of deaths from a London cholera outbreak in 1854.  The map was sufficient proof for city officials to remove the Broad Street pump's handle, ending the outbreak.  His subsequent statistical analysis of this and other outbreaks proved that a water borne agent was responsible for the disease.  This fitted nicely with the new germ theory of infection.

Its only 150 years since we began to understand the actual causes of disease.  Disease has been the single biggest cause of human misery.  Smallpox killed at least 300 million in the 20th century.  It is only a recent phenomenon that parents could expect all their children to reach adulthood.  And that's by no means true everywhere.  But the situation improves slowly, steadily in many parts of the world.  Every year that fewer parents have to bury their children as a matter of routine is a better year than the one before.

Anyway, epidemiology is the profession closest to detectives as portrayed in movies and books.  Anyone interested in the type of work shown on CSI ain't going to find it at their local police department.  Better to go into epidemeology where the real detectives work.

CDC page on Cholera
CDC Disease Index
Wikipedia page on Infectious Desease