Timeline of Microbiology
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Web site: http://www.microbeworld.org/htm/aboutmicro/timeline/tmln_4.htm
At least 800 types of bacteria
live in the human gut. The collective genome of these organisms
contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.78)
220Mil BC
Bacteria and single-celled animals and plants from this period
became encased in tree resin on the northern edge of the Tethys
Ocean. Scientists in 2006 studied the organisms in amber of this
time from a town in the Italian Dolomites. Ciliates and amoeba in
the amber appeared identical to modern examples.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.84)
10000BC The 1st known outbreaks of smallpox
occurred about this time among agricultural settlements in
northeastern Africa.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
8000BC In 1958 anthropologist Frank Livingstone
proposed that Plasmodium falciprum, the deadliest of 4or 5 parasites
that cause human malaria, hopped from chimps to humans about this
time and human hunter-gatherers began settling on farms.
(Econ, 8/8/09, p.69)
1350BCE The 1st recorded smallpox epidemic took
place during an Egyptian-Hittite war. Hittite warriors caught the
disease from Egyptian prisoners. The king and heir were fatally
infected and the empire fell apart.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(NW, 10/14/02, p.46)
430BC-410BC A mysterious
disease killed one-third of the Athenian population. Thucydides, who
was stricken but recovered, described the plague in Athens (likely
an outbreak of typhus fever) in Book 2 of his History of the
Peloponnesian War.
(NH, 6/97, p.11)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
180CE A smallpox epidemic hit
Rome and killed 3.5 to 7 million people including Emp. Marcus
Aurelius. It was dubbed the Plague of Antonine.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.46)
910 Rhazes, an Arab physician,
wrote the 1st account of smallpox and proposed the earliest theory
of immunity.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.46)
1017 In China a hermit
introduced the prime minister to “variolation,” an inoculation using
germs from smallpox survivors.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.47)
1347 Oct, Sailors from Genoa
arrived in Messina, Sicily. Plague had broken out earlier among the
troops of the Kipchak Khan, who was besieging the Black Sea port of
Kaffa. He catapulted dead bodies over the city walls. When Italian
trading vessels in the harbor returned to Genoa, the carried the
plague to Europe. The plague, an infectious fever caused by the
bacillus Yersinia pestis, appears in several varieties: bubonic
(which involves swelling of the lymph glands), pneumonic (which
involves the lungs) and septicemia (which involves severe infection
in the bloodstream).
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.31)(HNQ, 1/20/01)(SSFC,
3/6/05, p.B4)
1347-1350 The Black Death: A Genoese trading post
in the Crimea was besieged by an army of Kipchaks from Hungary and
Mongols from the East. The latter brought with them a new form of
plague, Yersinia pestis. Infected dead bodies were catapulted into
the Genoese town. One Genoese ship managed to escape and brought the
disease to Messina, Sicily. The disease quickly became an epidemic.
It moved over the next few years to northern Italy, North Africa,
France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, the Low
countries, England, Scandinavia and the Baltic. There were lesser
outbreaks in many cities for the next twenty years. An estimated 25
million died in Europe and economic depression followed. In 2005
John Kelly authored “The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the
Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time.”
(NG, 5/88, p.678)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(SSFC,
3/6/05, p.B1)(SFC, 10/13/11, p.A6)
1439 Jul 16, Kissing was banned
in England in order to stop germs from spreading.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1348 The population of Siena,
Italy, dropped from 97,000 to 45,000 in a few months due to the
Black Plague. Bernardo Tolomei, nearly blind founder of the
Benedictine Congregation of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto in the
1340s, died along with 82 of his monks after leaving the safety of
his monastery to tend to plague victims in Siena. In 2009 the
Vatican declared him a saint.
(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B1)(AP, 4/26/09)
1519 Mar 13, The Spaniards
under Cortez landed at Veracruz. Cortez landed in Mexico with 10
stallions, 5 mares and a foal. Smallpox was carried to America in
the party of Hernando Cortes.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T5)(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3)(HN,
3/13/98)(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1534 The King of Siam died of
smallpox.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1553 Bavaria outlawed
summer-made beer because wintertime brews had outstripped them in
quality. In 2011 a yeast from Patagonia, Saccharomyces eubayanus,
was identified as being 99.5% identical to the non-ale half of the
lager yeast genome. It was believed that over time Saccharomyces
eubayanus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae hybridized to form
Saccharomyces pastorianus, used by lager brewers today.
(Econ, 8/27/11, p.71)
1576 An epidemic of plague
Venice. In 2006 a well-preserved skeleton was found on the
Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other
corpses buried in a mass grave. Experts said the remains of a
woman with a brick stuck between her jaws indicated that she was
believed to be a vampire.
(AP, 3/14/09)
1604 Agustino Salumbrino, a
Jesuit monk, left Rome for Peru, where he studied native plants for
their healing powers, especially the bark of the cinchona tree used
by the Incas to treat shivering. By 1630 quinine entered the
literature as a treatment. In 2003 Fiammetta Rocco authored "The
Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed
the World."
(WUD, 1994, p.1245)(SFEC,10/26/97, BR p.8)(WSJ,
8/26/03, p.D5)
1616-1619 An epidemic, possibly viral hepatitis
from contact with Europeans, ravaged the Wampanoag confederacy in
Massachusetts. This helped to make possible the Pilgrim settlement
in 1620.
(Econ, 8/11/07, p.49)
1623 The 1st case of smallpox
in Russia was reported.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1665 In London at least 68,000
people died of the plague this year. In 1722 Daniel Defoe published
his novel “A Journal of the Plague Year.” The novel posed as a
historical document covering the London plague. The Lord Mayor of
London exterminated all the city’s cats and dogs, which allowed the
rats, the real transmitters of the disease, to increase
exponentially.
(NG, 5/88, p.684)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)(WSJ,
10/21/06, p.P8)
1720 May 25, "Le Grand St.
Antoine" reached Marseille, plague killed 80,000.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1721 Apr 26, The smallpox
vaccination was 1st administrated. Lady Mary Wortley Montegu had
returned to England following a stay in Turkey with her ambassador
husband. She had learned of a procedure to inoculate against
smallpox and began a campaign to have the procedure established.
(ON, 9/01, p.1)(MC, 4/26/02)
1721 Jun 26, Dr. Zabdiel
Boylston gave the 1st smallpox inoculation in Boston. The epidemic
had arrived by ship from Barbados.
(ON, 3/05, p.4)
1721 Jul 21, Doctors in Boston
raised objections to a new practice of using live smallpox to
inoculate patients against the disease. A smallpox epidemic had
recently broken out in Boston and Cotton Mather (58), following some
study, encouraged the inoculation technique to prevent death from
the disease.
(ON, 3/05, p.4)
1721 Oct 6, Deaths from
smallpox in Boston reached 203 with 2,757 people infected.
(ON, 3/05, p.5)
1722 Cotton Mather authored “An
Account of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small-Pox…”
This followed work in support of inoculation trials in Boston.
(WSJ, 11/22/08, p.W11)
1723 Aug 26, Anton van
Leeuwenhoek (b.1632), Dutch biologist, inventor (microscope), died
in Delft, Netherlands. [some sources say Aug 30]
(http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Catalog/Files/leewnhok.html)
1730 Smallpox returned to
Boston, but by this time inoculation was recognized as a viable
means of preventing death from the disease.
(ON, 3/05, p.5)
1749 May 17, Edward Jenner,
physician, discoverer of vaccination, was born.
(HN, 5/17/98)
1753 Smallpox hit North America
and a 38% infection rate was recorded in Boston. Benjamin Franklin
lobbied for variolation.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.47)
1763 British forces, under
orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst, distributed smallpox-infected
blankets among American Indians in the 1st known case of its use as
a biological weapon.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(NW, 10/14/02, p.50)
1789 Smallpox was introduced to
Australia and caused devastation among the aborigines.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1793 There was a yellow fever
epidemic in Philadelphia. Stephen Girard risked his life and fortune
in stopping the epidemic.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.6)
1796 May 14, English physician
Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox to
his gardener's son, James Phipps (8). A single blister rose up on
the spot, but James later demonstrated immunity to smallpox. Jenner
actually used vaccinia, a close viral relation to smallpox. [see
July 21, 1721]
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.77)(AP, 5/14/08)
1800 Jul 8, Dr. Benjamin
Waterhouse gave the 1st cowpox vaccination to his son to prevent
smallpox. [see May 14, 1796]
(MC, 7/8/02)
1806 Napoleon ordered that all
French citizens be vaccinated against smallpox.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.50)
1813 Mar 15, John Snow
(d.1858), obstetrician, was born in York, England. He worked on the
epidemiology of cholera.
(ON, 5/05,
p.8)(www.johnsnowsociety.org/johnsnow/facts.html)
1824 Jan 26, Edward Jenner,
discoverer of vaccination, died.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1831 A cholera epidemic broke
out in London.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)
1832 Feb 6, There was an
appearance of cholera at Edinburgh, Scotland.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1832 Feb, A cholera epidemic
ended in Great Britain. Some 800 people died of the disease in
London. Dr. John Snow eventually traced the London epidemic to a
water pump on Broad Street. [see 1849] In 2006 Steven Johnson
authored “The Ghost Map,” a history of London’s cholera outbreak.
(www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/1832chol.html)(WSJ,
10/21/06, p.P8)
1832 Aug, In Pennsylvania 57
Irish immigrants died of cholera after traveling there to build a
railroad. In 2009 their bones were found at a woodsy site known as
Duffy's Cut, named after Philip Duffy, who hired the immigrants from
Donegal, Tyrone and Derry to help build the Philadelphia and
Columbia Railroad. In 2010 evidence indicated that at least some of
the men’s remains showed signs of violence.
(AP, 3/25/09)(AP, 8/16/10)
1841-1912 Gerard H. Hansen, Norwegian physician.
He discovered the leprosy-causing Mycobacterium leprae (aka Hansen’s
disease).
(WUD, 1994, p.644)
1843 Dec 11, Robert Koch
(d.1910), German physician, bacteriologist, and medical researcher,
was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
(http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html)
1848 A new cholera epidemic
struck in London.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)
1849 John Snow (1813-1858),
English obstetrician, authored his 39-page pamphlet “On the Mode of
Communication of Cholera.” He presented evidence that the disease
was spread through contaminated water.
(ON, 5/05,
p.8)(www.johnsnowsociety.org/johnsnow/facts.html)
1853 A smallpox epidemic hit
Hawaii and 5-6000 people died.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1854 Mar 14, Paul Ehrlich,
German bacteriologist, was born. He later received the Nobel Prize
for medicine.
(HN, 3/14/99)
1854 Italian anatomist Fillipo
Pacini discovered the cholera bacillus, but did not prove that it
caused cholera. His work remained obscure and was not translated to
English.
(ON, 5/05, p.10)
1854 Cholera broke out in
London again. Dr. John Snow traced it to cesspool near a public
water pump on Broad Street.
(ON, 5/05, p.9)
1855 Yellow Fever broke out in
Norfolk, Va., after a steamship carrying mosquitoes in its cisterns
docked from the West Indies.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, Par p.4)
1857 May 13, Ronald Ross,
bacteriologist, was born.
(HN, 5/13/01)
1858 Jun 16, Dr. John Snow
(b.1813), English obstetrician, died of a stroke. He is considered
the father of epidemiology for his efforts in documenting the spread
of cholera in London epidemics.
(ON, 5/05, p.10)
1860 In France the Yonne
Department had almost 99,000 acres of grapevines for wine. Diseases
such as oidium and phylloxera destroyed the Chablis vines in the
late 19th century and the Carmenére grape was wiped out in
France. In 1994 the Carmenére grape was found to be thriving
in Chile.
(SFC, 7/16/97, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 12/28/01, p.A17)
1864 Phylloxera was 1st noted
on grapevines in Roquemaure, France. It ravaged the vineyards there
for nearly 20 years. In 1872 it reached Austria and Portugal. In
1875 it appeared in Australia and in 1886 in South Africa. In 1987
George Ordish authored “The Great Wine Blight.” In 2004 Christy
Campbell authored “Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World.” In
2011 George Gale authored “Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera
Transformed Wine.”
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.E3)(Econ, 7/23/11, p.81)
1865 Sep 1, Joseph Lister
performed his 1st antiseptic surgery.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1866 Jul 21, A cholera-epidemic
killed hundreds in London.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1867 There was a yellow-fever
epidemic in the US.
(SSFC, 2/25/01, BR p.5)
1870 Aug 17, Frederick Russell,
developed 1st successful typhoid fever vaccine, was born.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1876 The gladiolus rust,
Uromyces trasversalis, was discovered in South Africa. Some 90 years
later it turned up in the Mediterranean region then spread to
Europe, South America, and Australia. In 2006 it was detected in the
US.
(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.L2)
1877 Arthur Downes and Thomas
P. Blunt of Shrewsbury proved the bactericidal action of light.
Blunt was offered a British knighthood for his achievements in
research, but humbly declined. His partner in research, Arthur
Downes, accepted the title.
(http://members.shaw.ca/TPBLUNT/)
1878 Jul 12, A Yellow Fever
epidemic began in New Orleans. It killed 4,500.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1879 Aug 30, John Bell Hood
(b.1831), former confederate general, died of yellow fever in a New
Orleans epidemic.
(AH, 10/02,
p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_Hood)
1880 Dec 11, Louis Pasteur
(57), French scientist, began an experiment to identify the microbe
that causes rabies.
(ON, 6/08, p.4)
1881 Aug 6, Alexander Fleming
(d.1955), Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin (1928),
was born. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954. Fleming first observed the
antibiotic properties of the mold that makes penicillin, but it was
Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey who developed it into a
useful treatment.
(AHD, 1971,
p.501)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming)
1882 Mar 24, German scientist
Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discovered the bacillus
responsible for tuberculosis.
(AP, 3/23/97)
1884 Robert Koch, German
microbiologist, rediscovered, isolated and cultured the cholera
bacillus, Vibrio cholerae. Italian anatomist Fillipo Pacini
discovered the bacillus in 1854, but did not prove that it caused
cholera.
(ON, 5/05, p.10)
1885 Mar, In Loganville, Pa.,
Dr. George E. Holtzapple (22) saved Fred Gable (16), who was
suffering from pneumonia, by supplying the boy with pure oxygen.
Oxygen therapy became the only effective treatment for pneumonia
until antibiotics became available in the 1940s.
(ON, 4/07, p.10)
1885 Jul 6, French scientist
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) successfully tested an anti-rabies vaccine
on a boy bitten by an infected dog. Thanks to his vaccine the death
rate from rabies dropped to almost zero by 1888.
(AP, 7/6/97)(ON, 6/08, p.6)
1887 Feb 21, The 1st US
bacteriology laboratory opened in Brooklyn.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1890 The tuberculin skin test
(TST or Mantoux) was developed.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.B9)
1892 Mar 3, 1st cattle
tuberculosis test in US was made at Villa Nova, PA.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1892 Aug 30, The Moravia, a
passenger ship arriving from Germany, brought cholera to the United
States.
(HN, 8/30/98)
1895 Sep 28, Louis Pasteur
(b.1822), French chemist (Pasteurization), died at 72. In 1995
Gerald Geison (d.2001) authored “The Private Science of Louis
Pasteur.
(SFC, 7/13/01, p.D6)(MC, 9/28/01)
1895 Prof. Emile Pierre van
Ermengem of Belgium identified the bacterium Bacillus botulinus.
(NW, 5/13/02, p.54)
1898 Jun 2, Dr. Paul-Louis
Simond discovered the connections between rats, fleas and humans in
the transmittance of the Plague in Bombay, India.
(NG, 5/88, p.678)
1899 Mar 6, Aspirin was
patented following Felix Hoffman’s discoveries about the properties
of acetylsalicylic acid.
(HN, 3/6/01)
1899 Dr. Charles Wardell
Stiles, a zoologist from Hartford, Connecticut, identified
"progressive pernicious anemia," seen in the southern United States,
as caused by A. duodenale. He also identified the other important
hookworm species: Necator americanus. Stiles had studied medical
zoology in Europe in the late 19th century and learned about
hookworms while helping with animal autopsies and studies. From 1909
to 1914, doctors, public health officials, and northern businessmen
worked to destroy what they called the "germ of laziness." They
believed such a germ caused many of the South's problems, poverty, a
sickly population, and economic underdevelopment. But the germ these
people were attacking wasn't a germ at all. It was a worm, the
hookworm.
(www.isradiology.org/tropical_deseases/tmcr/chapter12/intro.htm)(SSFC,
9/26/10, DB p.50)
1900 Jan 19, In Australia
Arthur Paine (33), a delivery man whose daily work brought him into
contact with Sidney’s Central Wharf, died of Bubonic plague. A
population of black rats had been likely introduced to Australia on
the first fleet of ships carrying white settlers.
(http://tinyurl.com/3bkr6ll)
1900 May 30, It was reported
that 9 deaths in Chinatown were caused by Bubonic plague, the
Yersinia pestis bacterium, and that 159 policemen had set up a
quarantine. In 2003 Marilyn Chase authored “The Barbary Plague: The
Black Death in Victorian San Francisco.”
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W2)(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.M2)(WSJ,
3/25/03, p.D10)
1900 Jun 26, A commission that
included Dr. Walter Reed began the fight against the deadly disease
yellow fever. Walter Reed (1851-1902), U.S. Army doctor, went to
Cuba and verified that yellow fever was caused by a mosquito.
(HN, 9/13/98)(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.B1)(AP, 6/26/97)
1901 Feb 20, Rene Dubos,
French-US microbiologist who developed the first commercial
antibiotic, was born in France. He authored “Health & Disease.”
(HN, 2/20/01)(MC, 2/20/02)
1901 Aug 27, In Havana, Cuba,
U.S. Army physician James Carroll allowed an infected mosquito to
feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of
yellow fever. Days later, Carroll developed a severe case of yellow
fever, helping his colleague, Army Walter Reed, prove that
mosquitoes can transmit the sometimes deadly disease.
(MC, 8/27/02)(ON, 10/01, p.8)
1902 Ronald Ross (1857-1932),
an English physician, won the Nobel Prize for his work on malaria.
His story is part of the 1997 novel "The Calcutta Chromosome: A
Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery" by Amitav Ghosh. In 2003
Fiammetta Rocco authored "The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria and the
Quest for a Cure That Changed the World."
(WUD, 1994, p.1245)(SFEC,10/26/97, BR p.8)(WSJ,
8/26/03, p.D5)
1903 Apr 14, Dr. Harry Plotz in
NYC discovered a vaccine against typhoid.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1903 Walter Sutton, American
cytologist, suggested that the Mendelian elements of heredity lay on
the chromosomes.
(NH, 6/01, p.32)
1904 May 29, Robert Knox,
bacteriologist, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1905 Nettie Stevens,
geneticist, showed that sex was associated with the X chromosome.
(NH, 6/01, p.32)
1906 Aug 26, Albert Bruce
Sabin, U.S. virologist, born in Poland. In 1955, he developed an
oral vaccine against polio.
(RTH, 8/26/99)
1907 May 27, Bubonic Plague
broke out in San Francisco.
(HN, 5/27/98)
1909 May 19, San Francisco
Mayor Edward Taylor wrote a letter to Pres. Taft testifying to the
valuable aid of the federal government in the city’s recent campaign
against bubonic plague.
(SSFC, 5/31/09, DB p.50)
1909 Konstantin S. Merezhovsky,
biologist, argued that the chloroplasts in plant cells evolved from
symbionts of foreign origin and coined the term “symbiogenesis” to
describe the merger of different kinds of life forms into new
species.
(NH, 6/01, p.40)
1909 Carlos Chagas (1879-1934),
a Brazilian doctor, described how a fatal infection, that became
known as Chagas disease, was transmitted as a single cell parasite,
Trypanosoma cruzi, carried by insects that typically bite their
sleeping victims on the face. In 1921 Chagas won the Nobel Prize in
Medicine. In 2010 scientists at UC San Francisco reported the
development of a protease inhibitor, K777, which appeared to kill
the parasite.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Chagas)(Econ, 4/11/09,
p.36)(SSFC, 2/14/10, p.A20)
1910 Feb 19, Mary Mallon (aka
Typhoid Mary) was released from 4 years of quarantine on New York’s
North Brother Island. In 1914 she caused a typhus outbreak in the
Sloane Maternity Hospital. She was again arrested and returned to
North Brother Island where she died Nov 11, 1938.
(ON, 7/01, p.12)
1910 May 27, Robert Koch
(b.1843), German bacteriologist (TB, Cholera, Nobel), died.
(http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html)
1910 Jun 22, German
bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich announced a definitive cure for
syphilis.
(AP, 6/22/01)
1910 Dec 18, The first
dispensary for treating hookworm disease opened in Columbia,
Mississippi.
(http://tinyurl.com/24cckey)
1912 Feb 10, Dr. Joseph Lister,
founder of sterile technique in surgical practice, died at age 85.
In 1917 Sir Rickman John Godlee authored “Lord Lister.”
(ON, 7/00, p.9)
1913 The US Virus Serum Toxin
Act gave the USDA authority to ensure that veterinary diagnostic
kits are safe and accurate and to decide where cattle can be tested
and for what.
(WSJ, 3/904, p.A8)(SFC, 4/10/04, p.A3)
1913 New York state passed “the
eight foot sheet law” to ensure that the upper sheet in a hotel was
of sufficient length to cover the face so “that the inhalation by
the occupant of bacteria &c, may be prevented.”
(WSJ, 10/4/08, p.W8)
1913 Bela Schick devised the
"Schick test," which had a dramatic effect on the incidence of
diphtheria. The skin test determined a patient’s susceptibility to
diphtheria. Mass surveys followed by immunization of Schick-positive
children with inactive toxin resulted in a drastic decrease in the
incidence of the disease.
(HNQ, 6/8/99)
1915 Sep 19, Elizabeth Stern,
Canadian pathologist, was born. She first published a case report
linking a specific virus to a specific cancer.
(HN, 9/19/00)
1916 Anton Dilger (1884-1918),
an American educated as a surgeon in Germany, set up a basement
laboratory in Washington DC for cultivating anthrax bacteria and
Pseudomonas mallei to infect horses and cattle destined to supply
Allied armies. German saboteurs disseminated the bacteria. Dilger
later moved to Mexico to help goad Mexico into attacking the US. He
died of the Spanish flu in Madrid. In 2007 Robert Koenig authored
“The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Mission to Wage the Great War in
America.”
(SSFC, 1/14/07, p.M2)
1918 Mar, The flu epidemic
began at Fort Riley, Kansas, where 48 men died. It was carried by
recruits to Europe where it mutated and returned with a vengeance.
[see May, 1918] The Spanish flu was later found to have been caused
by a genetic fusion of pig and human viruses. In 1997 Dr. Johan
Hultin recovered tissue in Brevig Mission, Alaska, with frozen virus
and submitted it for gene sequencing.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A16)(HNPD, 7/21/98)(SFC, 2/26/01,
p.A9)(WSJ, 9/7/01, p.A1)(SFCM, 2/17/02, p.8)
1918 Oct 17, Anton Dilger
(B.1884), an American saboteur educated as a surgeon in Germany,
died of Spanish flu in Spain. [see 1916] In 2007 Robert Koenig
authored “The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Mission to Wage the Great
War in America.”
(SSFC, 1/14/07, p.M2)
1919 Mar 19, A typhoid epidemic
raged in Petrograd, Russia, killing 200 daily.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1922 Nov 15, It was announced
that Dr. Alexis Carrel discovered white corpuscles.
(HN, 11/15/00)
1925 Dr. Albert C. Barnes
(1872-1951) built a mansion to house his collection of French
impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in Merion,
Pennsylvania. The collection grew to some 2,500 objects and their
setup and access was highly restricted by Dr. Barnes’ trust
indenture. Barnes had made his fortune with a pediatric antibiotic
called Argyrol. By 2000 his foundation was broke. In 2003 John
Anderson authored ""Art Held Hostage," an account of the Barnes
collection.
(WSJ, 11/28/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 7/18/03, p.W18)
1925 In debates over the Geneva
Protocol opponents touted poison gas as a "decisive offensive
weapon." A ban on chemical and biological weapons was signed by most
nations, but not the US until much later. The Geneva Convention
outlawed the use of biological warfare, but did not prohibit nations
from continuing the production of biological agents.
(SFC,11/12/97, p.C2)(NH, 10/98, p.18)(AH, 6/03,
p.46)
1928 Sep 3, Scottish
bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) discovered, by
accident, that the mold penicillin has an antibiotic effect.
(V.D.-H.K.p.354)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming)
1930 A computer study in 2000
suggested that the AIDS virus was introduced to the human population
from chimp and monkey variants about this time.
(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 1/15/01, p.A11)
1930 Minoru Shirota, a Japanese
researcher, discovered Lactobacillus casei shirota.
(Econ Sp, 12/13/03, p.11)
1932 Apr 28, A yellow fever
vaccine for humans was announced.
(HN, 4/28/98)
1932 Aug 18, Luc Montagnier,
virologist, was born. He discovered the human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV).
(HN, 8/18/00)
1934 Hans Zinsser, Harvard
bacteriologist, wrote "Rats, Lice and History," a biography of the
virus behind typhoid fever.
(NH, 9/98, p.9)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
1935 The vollum strain of
anthrax was 1st isolated from a cow in Oxfordshire, U.K. This was
the strain later used on Gruinard Island tests. Hundreds of Bacillus
anthracis strains exist. Other common strains named were Ames,
Sterne and Michigan. The Ames strain was named after a sick cow in
Ames, Iowa.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A8)(WSJ, 11/8/01, p.A1)
1937 The West Nile virus was
1st identified in the West Nile District of Uganda. It was able to
cause fatal encephalitis in humans.
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.D6)
1940 Japanese warplanes dropped
plague-infected fleas over southwest China. In 2001 Chinese doctors
testified in a Tokyo trial and said at least 109 people died as a
result. In 2002 a symposium of historians reported that the Japanese
killed at least 440,000 Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s by dropping
disease carrying fleas and cholera-coated flies from planes.
(WSJ, 1/25/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/07, p.B12)
1941 Jul 4, Howard Florey &
Norman Heatley met for 1st time, 11 days later they successfully
recreated penicillin.
(MC, 7/4/02)
1941 Jul 15, Florey and Heatley
presented freeze dried mold cultures (Penicillin).
(MC, 7/15/02)
1941 George Beadle, geneticist,
and Edward Tatum, chemist, identified genetic mutations that
disabled specific steps in the synthesis of a complex molecule. They
thus showed that a gene was a thing on a chromosome that specified
an enzyme.
(NH, 6/01, p.33)
1941 Prof. William Reeves
(1916-2004) and William M. Hammon isolated the 2 viruses that caused
western equine and St. Louis encephalitis and proved that they were
carried by a mosquito named Culex tarsalis.
(SFC, 9/21/04, p.B7)
1942 Jul, Dr. Paul Fildes led a
British test of anthrax in a bomb on Gruinard Island in northwest
Scotland. The island became contaminated from tests and Britain
acquired it for £500. Cleanup was undertaken in 1986 and the
island was returned to its original owners in 1990.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A23)(Econ, 5/8/04, p.78)
1942 Sep, More than 400
villagers died of bubonic plague in China’s eastern Zhejiang
province after Japanese warplanes of medical Unit 731 dropped germ
bombs. Unit 731 was stationed on the outskirts of Harbin, China,
until the Soviet Union entered the war. The unit deposited typhus
into the water supply flowing into Manchuria. In 2000 Yoshio
Shinozuka testified to seeing men infected with the plague and then
being dissected while still alive. Harbin had 26 affiliates across
China and its germ bombs (anthrax, cholera, typhus and bubonic
plague) killed an estimated 270,000 people. Biological warfare
activities of Unit 731 were unknown to most Japanese citizens until
1981, when author Seiichi Morimura exposed its dark history in a
book, "The Devil's Gluttony".
(SFEC, 12/8/96, p.C8)(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(SFC,
8/15/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/22/00, p.D6)(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A8)(AP,
8/27/02)
1942 Dec 10, George W. Merck,
former president of Merck Pharmaceutical and head of the War
Research Service, requested the Chemical Warfare Service to develop
a biological warfare program.
(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1942 Dec, Dr. Ira Baldwin
(1896-1999), plant bacteriologist at the Univ. of Wisconsin, was
selected to head US biological warfare.
(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1943 Oct 9, Alexander Fleming
reported in Lancet the 1st successful treatment of streptococcal
meningitis with intramuscular and intrathecal (directly into the
spinal fluid) injections of the just-purified penicillin.
(WSJ, 10/17/02, p.A19)
1943-1965 Members of the Special Operations
Division from Maryland’s Fort Detrick biological weapons program
conducted over 200 tests during this period on the effectiveness of
aerially dispersed pathogens. At least 4 men died during the years
of the project. Some 658,039 animals were killed, including sheep,
ferrets, cats, pigs, white mice and guinea pigs.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1943-1986 Building E5625, the “Pilot Plant,” at
the US Army Aberdeen Proving Ground was built and used for
experiments and production of agents in chemical and biological
warfare. In 1977 public knowledge of the pathogen experiments caused
citizen outrage.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)
1944 Apr 27, Dr. H. Corwin
Hinshaw (d.2000) first treated 4 tuberculosis-infected guinea pigs
with the newly developed streptomycin antibiotic. The animals were
cured. Hinshaw was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1952 but the
prize went to Dr. Selman a. Waksman of Rutgers, who discovered
streptomycin.
(SFC, 1/11/01, p.C16)
1945 Sir Alexander Fleming was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his co-discovery of
penicillin along with Ernst B. Chain (b.1908), German chemist,
bacteriologist, and Dr. Howard Florey, who found Fleming's paper in
1938 and began clinical trials.
(WUD, 1994, p.542)(SFC, 1/19/04, p.B4)
1947 The 1st penicillin
resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were reported.
(NG, 11/04, p.21)
1949 Lillian Barber died in
Texas in the last reported US case of smallpox.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(NW, 10/14/02, p.51)
1950 Sep, A secret US Army and
Navy experiment spread Serratia marcescens bacteria, because of its
red pigment, and Bacillus globigii, because of its formed spores
similar to anthrax, off the coast of San Francisco Bay from a mine
laying ship for 6 days. The bacteria was thought to be harmless, but
the germs sent 11 people to hospitals and killed one person. Edward
J. Nevin, from a heart infection. In 1977 Senate subcommittee
hearings the Army revealed that it had staged the mock biological
attack.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A1)(AH,
6/03, p.49)
1951 Dr. Esther Lederberg
(1922-2006) of the Univ. of Wisconsin discovered the lambda phage, a
virus that infects other bacteria with the ability to transfer genes
among them.
(SFC, 11/28/06, p.B7)
1953 Mar 26, Dr. Jonas Salk of
the University of Pittsburgh announced that a vaccine against polio
had been successfully tested in a small group of adults and
children. By April 1955, the vaccine had undergone further testing
and gained federal approval for public use. Salk’s polio vaccine was
so successful that by 1961 the incidence of polio had decreased by
95 percent. Dr. Joseph Melnick (d.2001 at 86) was among the first to
have discovered that the polio virus belonged to the larger
enterovirus group and were chiefly transmitted by fecal
contamination.
(HNPD, 3/26/99)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.C2)
1953 Nov 11, The Polio virus
was identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1953 Helenor Foerster (d.1998
at 103) was named "Woman of the Year for Science" by the Women’s
National Press Club. She co-authored the "Atlas and Textbook of
Ophthalmic Pathology," and discovered that toxoplasma was the cause
of a widely spread eye disease that led to blindness.
(SFC, 9/23/98, p.C2)
1954 Feb 23, The first mass
inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in
Pittsburgh. Jonas Salk created the Salk vaccine against polio. It
used a killed virus to induce immunization. Poliomyelitis is a viral
attack of the central nervous system and can cause paralysis and
death by asphyxiation. [see Apr 26] In 2005 David M. Oshinsky
authored “Polio: An American Story – The Crusade That Mobilized the
Nation Against the 20th Century’s Most Feared Disease.”
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.A10)(HN, 2/23/98)(AP,
2/23/98)(Econ, 6/18/05, p.79)
1954 Apr 26, Nationwide test of
Salk anti-polio vaccine began. [see Feb 23]
(MC, 4/26/02)
1954 Jun 7, The 1st
microbiology laboratory was dedicated in New Brunswick, NJ.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1955 Mar 11, Alexander Fleming
(73), English bacteriologist (penicillin), died.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1955 Apr 12, The Salk Vaccine
was declared safe and effective. Salk vaccine shots for polio began
to be given out to school kids. The March of Dimes accomplished its
mission within 20 years. Research led by Dr. Jonas Salk and
supported by funds (those marching little dimes) raised annually by
thousands of volunteers, resulted in the announcement that the Salk
polio vaccine was "safe, potent and effective." The foundation also
supported the research that led to the Sabin oral vaccine, another
safe, effective polio preventative discovered by Dr. Albert B.
Sabin. Following the victory over infantile paralysis, the March of
Dimes turned its attention to conquering the largest killer and
crippler of children: the mental and physical problems that are
present at birth. Some 100 million people were given the vaccine
during the 1950s and 1960s which was later found to be contaminated
with the SV40 simian virus, a possible carcinogen.
(AP, 4/12/97)(440 Int'l, 1/3/99)(SSFC, 7/15/01,
p.A16,17)
1955 Apr 25, The 1st cases of
polio in children who received a vaccine were reported. It was later
found that 2 batches of vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories of
Berkeley, Ca., contained live polio virus.
(SFC, 4/25/05, p.A1)
1956 Apr 12, Henrique da
Rocha-Lima (b.1879), Brazilian scientist, died. Working in Germany,
he with Stanislaus von Prowazek (1875-1915) discovered Rickettsia
prowazekii, the pathogen of endemic typhus, which he named after the
German zoologist.
(www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/3185.html)
1957 Dr. Hilary Koprowski of
the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia developed an oral polio vaccine
and tested it in Africa (Congo). The Wister polio vaccine was given
to some 300,000 people in the Belgian Congo from 1957-1960. A later
theory held that reuse of needles during the immunization program
caused AIDS via “serial passage” that transformed the SIV virus into
HIV. In 1999 Edward Hooper authored “The River,” a detailed
hypothesis for the origin of AIDS in Africa. Hooper suspected that
the Wister polio vaccine, produced from monkey kidney cells,
contained SIV virus. In 2000 a computerized study indicated that the
AIDS virus was introduced to humans about 1930.
(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 1/15/01, p.A11)(SFC,
4/13/05, p.A5)(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)
1958 Dr. Samuel L. Katz of Duke
Univ. co-developed the Edmonston B vaccine against measles.
(SFC, 11/16/00, p.A19)
1958 The rapid development of
penicillin-resistance by staphylococci led to the compound 05865
(later known as vancomycin) being fast-tracked for approval by
the FDA. It became the best weapon against bacteria that were
no longer vulnerable to other drugs. In 1988 bacteria resistant to
vancomycin began to be detected.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin)(SFEC,
9/14/97, p.C1,4)
1958 Monkeypox was first
described in Denmark when several monkey imports developed lesions.
The disease emerged in the Congo in 1970 with sporadic outbreaks
over the years, primarily in Central and West Africa. Ten percent of
those infected can die, and there is evidence of person-to-person
transmission.
(AP, 11/29/06)
1958 David Carr, a British
printer and former sailor for the Royal Navy, was struck with
mysterious symptoms and died a year later. In 1990 his cells tested
positive for AIDS. He had returned to England in 1957 before Wister
polio vaccine was administered in the Belgian Congo. In 1995 it was
reported that his tissue samples had been contaminated.
(SSFC, 1/14/01, p.A14,15)
1959 Researchers in 1998 found
the HIV virus of AIDS in a blood specimen from a Bantu man who died
in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo, later Kinshasa, Congo. This became
the oldest known case and researchers believed that incidents could
go back to the 1940s. Blood specimen ZR59 from the Belgian Congo of
this time, was found in 1998 to be positive for the AIDS HIV virus.
(SFC, 2/4/98,
p.A5)(www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/165/2/)
1960 The new antibiotic
methicillin was introduced. In 1961 strains of Staphylococcus aureus
resistant to Methicillin (MRSA) were first reported.
(SFC, 5/29/97,
p.A4)(www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX026108.html)
1961 Strains of Staphylococcus
aureus resistant to Methicillin (MRSA) were first reported.
The antibiotic methicillin had only become available in 1960.
(Econ, 11/5/05,
p.87)(www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX026108.html)
1962-1973 In 2001 the Pentagon began to publicly
release details on the existence of Project SHAD and its umbrella
program, Project 112, which involved distribution of nonlethal
bacteria and occasionally real chemical or biological weapons. In
2008 the US Defense Department said 6,440 service members took part
in 50 tests under Project 112 during this period, including open-air
tests above a half-dozen US states. Defense officials essentially
closed the books on Project 112 in 2003.
(AP, 6/12/08)
1963 A vaccine for measles
became available. In the previous decade some 450,000 cases were
reported in the US with about 450 deaths per year.
(SFC, 12/22/06, p.A18)
1964-1968 The Pentagon reported on May 23, 2002,
that the Defense Dept. sprayed live nerve and biological agents over
Navy ships in 6 six tests between 1964-1968. The Project shipboard
Hazard and Defense (SHAD) experiments included the use of sarin and
VX nerve gases and the staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB).
(SFC, 5/24/02, p.A7)
1965 Paul De Kruif authored
Microbe Hunters.
(ON, 3/03, p.9)
1965 Chinese military
researchers isolated artemisinin, a compound based on sweet
wormwood, and found to be very effective against malaria.
(SFC, 5/10/04, p.A5)(Econ, 11/20/04, p.81)
1966 In 2007 researchers said
HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa,
and then came to the United States in about 1969. The researchers
think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant arrived in a
large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for
years, first in the US population and then to other nations.
(AP, 10/30/07)
1967 Jan 14, NY Times reported
that the US Army was conducting secret germ warfare experiments.
(www.economicexpert.com/a/1967.htm)
1967 In Marburg, Germany, a
disease believed to be caused from African monkeys infected 31
people in a laboratory. The virus came to be called the Marburg
virus. Seven people died in Germany and Yugoslavia from the virus.
It was traced to infected vervet monkeys from Uganda cut up for
polio research.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.D2)(Econ, 8/18/07, p.40)
1968 In Venezuela researchers,
Napoleon Chagnon and James V. Neel, reportedly inoculated thousands
of Yanomami Indians with a measles vaccine. Chagnon published
"Yanomamö: The Fierce People," a summation of his 30 years in
the Amazon forest. In 2000 the controversial book "Darkness in El
Dorado" Patrick Tierney blamed the researchers for a major epidemic
that killed hundreds of Indians. At least 30 Indians died from a
measles epidemic that hit Yanomani villages at least one year before
researchers administered the Edmonston B vaccine [see 1967].
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A4)(SFC, 11/16/00, p.A19)(NH,
Jul, p.28)(WSJ, 2/23/08, p.W8)
1969 Nov 25, Pres. Nixon
announced an unconditional renunciation of biological weapons.
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/9yy6bc)
1969 Benjamin Volcani
(1915-1999), Palestine-born microbiologist, was the fist to show
that silicon is essential for DNA synthesis in diatoms. He was also
the first to find microorganisms in the Dead Sea in 1936.
(SFC, 2/12/99,
p.D4)(www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/volcani.html)
1969 In Egypt the construction
on the Aswan High Dam, which expanded irrigation, had led to an
increase in bilharzia infection. In this year the government began
to channel its bilharzia interventions into more comprehensive and
organized control programs and projects. During the 1970’s and 1980s
a campaign of multiple drug injections to combat the parasitic
disease led to a massive spread of hepatitis c.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.54)(http://tinyurl.com/wuwmx)
1971 The 1st vaccine against
meningitis was developed.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A19)
1971 Managua, Nicaragua, was
struck by a polio epidemic.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F4)
1971 A Soviet field test of
weaponized smallpox caused an outbreak that killed 2 young children
and a woman at the port of Aralsk in the Kazak Republic. This was
not made public until 2002.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A8)
1971 The US ended routine
vaccination against smallpox.
(SSFC, 9/2/07, p.A5)
1972 Jul 25, US health
officials conceded that blacks were used as guinea pigs in the 40
year Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Ala. By this time 28
participants had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related
complications, at least 40 wives had been infected and 19 children
had contracted the disease at birth [see 1932].
(SC, 7/25/02)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A27)
1973 Jeff Schell (1935-2003),
Belgian microbiologist, succeeded in altering the genetic structure
of the Agrobacterium. He deleted the genes that governed tumor
production.
(SFC, 5/3/03, p.A20)
1974 A US moratorium on genetic
research ended. It had been feared that such research would lead to
dangerous breeds of microbes.
(SFEC, 9/17/00, p.A16)
1974 In Brazil a meningitis
outbreak killed 4,000 people in a few weeks. 90 million people were
soon inoculated by a new vaccine created by the French Merieux
laboratory.
(SFC, 1/27/01, p.A24)
1975 Smallpox was eradicated in
India and Bangladesh.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1976 Feb, Swine flu broke out
at a US Army base in New Jersey. Pres. Ford announced a National
Swine Flu Immunization Program a month after the virus was
identified. In 1982 Richard E. Neustadt and Harvey V. Fineberg
authored “The Epidemic That Never Was.”
(WSJ, 11/28/05, p.B1)
1976 Jul 21, "Legionnaire's
Disease" struck in Philadelphia, Pa. 29 people died from the
disease. The disease was first identified after an outbreak at the
Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. It was identified as
Legionella pneumophila and found to infest water systems in general
and the hotel ventilation system in this case.
(OGA, 11/24/98)(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-17)
1976 Jul 27, Air Force veteran
Ray Brennan became the first person to die of so-called
"Legionnaire’s Disease" following an American Legion convention in
Philadelphia.
(AP, 7/27/00)
1976 Dec 16, The US government
halted its swine flu vaccination program following reports of
paralysis apparently linked to the vaccine.
(AP, 12/16/01)
1976 William H. McNeill
authored “Plagues and Peoples,” a history of human society with
microscopic agents of disease as the main protagonists.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
1976 Whooping cough, caused by
Bordatella pertussis, reached an all-time low of 1,010 in the US
following universal childhood vaccination programs.
(SFC, 12/15/05, p.B5)
1976 In Zaire (later Congo) the
Ebola virus was discovered and named after a river there. The Ebola
virus was 1st identified in western Sudan and the nearby region of
Congo. The virus can stop blood from clotting causing patients to
bleed. An outbreak of the Ebola virus killed 280 people, most of
whom were infected by reused syringes and needles.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.A5)(SFC, 1/8/02, p.A6)
1977 Mar 8, The U.S. Army
announced that they had conducted 239 open-air tests of germ
warfare.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1977 Dr. Elizabeth Williams of
Fort Collins classified the endemic chronic wasting disease of local
deer as a spongiform disease. It was found to be infectious 2 years
later and then spread across to 8 states and Canada. Research later
suggested that it could infect people.
(WSJ, 5/24/02, p.A1)
1977 The viral disease smallpox
was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The
last case of smallpox, spread by variola virus, was reported in
Somalia. Int’l. immunization ceased by 1978 in most countries. In
1997 the related Monkey virus broke out in Zaire.
(SFC, 4/1/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 10/19/01, p.A9)
1978 Jan 18, Center for Disease
Control (CDC) isolated the cause of Legionnaire's disease.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1978 Feb 9, In Tanzania cholera
broke out and killed 300 people.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)
1978 Nov 7, By this date the
CDC had confirmed 496 sporadic cases associated with outbreaks of
Legionnaire's disease in the US.
(http://tinyurl.com/35af6s)
1979 Mar 30, Anthrax spores
leaked from a secret germ-warfare plant and spread over Sverdlovsk
(Yekaterinburg), Russia. Over the course of 2 months at least 105
people died of anthrax poisoning. [see Apr 2] Reports did not emerge
until October.
(WSJ, 10/11/01,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_Anthrax_leak)
1979 Apr 2, Anthrax was found
to have leaked from the secret lab of Compound 19 in Sverdlovsk
(later renamed Yekaterinburg) in the Ural Mountains. It caused a
local epidemic that killed at least 64/66 people. Pres. Yeltsin
acknowledged the leak in 1992 and allowed a team of researchers to
investigate the site. In 2000 Jeanne Guillemin authored "Anthrax:
The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak." [see Mar 30]
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A14)(SFEC, 8/13/00, BR p.7)(WSJ,
9/18/01, p.B1)
1979 Dr. J. Robert Warren first
observed an apparent bacterium in the lower part of stomach
biopsies. In 1982 Dr. Barry Marshall managed to grow the
slow-growing Helicobacter pylori bacterium in a culture. In 2005 the
Australian researchers won a Nobel Prize for their work.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A11)
1979 AIDS was diagnosed for the
first time. When the first cases of AIDS erupted in 1979 the most
important sign was the occurrence of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), the
so-called "gay cancer" appearing on the bodies of some homosexuals
dying of the disease.
(V.D.-H.K.p.354)(www.konformist.com/1999/aids/cantwell2.htm)
1980 May 8, The World Health
Organization (WHO) announced that smallpox had been eradicated from
the wild.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm79sp.html)
1980 The US Supreme Court ruled
that "live human-made microorganism is patentable matter." This led
to a rush by Genentech, Biogen and others to commercialize
biotechnology.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1980 A global campaign was
begun to eradicate guinea worm, aka dracunculiasis, a disabling
parasitic disease existing in only 4 African countries.
(SFC, 10/5/11, p.A2)
1981 Jun 5, The US Federal
Centers for Disease Control published the first report of a
mysterious outbreak of a sometimes fatal pneumonia among gay men.
Dr. Michael Gottlieb of UCLA and Dr. Joel Weisman (1943-2009)
reported 5 cases of a rare pneumonia among gay men in LA. The
disease was initially called gay related immune deficiency (GRID).
The syndrome was named Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in
1982. Within 10 years the disease killed 110,000 Americans. People
infected with HIV came to be defined as having AIDS when their
immune system became so weak that they got one of 26 specific
illnesses including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, pneumonia, brain
infections and some other cancers.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.B2)(AP, 6/5/02)(SSFC, 6/4/06,
p.A1)(Econ, 6/3/06, p.24)(SFC, 7/24/09, p.D5)
1981 Aug 28, The US national
Centers for Disease Control, noting a high incidence of Kaposi's
sarcoma and pneumocystis in homosexual men, announced a medical task
force had been formed to find out why. It was later determined the
increased number of illnesses was caused by AIDS.
(AP, 8/28/01)
1982 Marc Lappe (1942-2004),
toxics expert, authored “Germs That Won’t Die: Medical Consequences
of the Misuse of Antibiotics.”
(SFC, 5/18/05, p.B7)
1982 The bacteria E. coli
O157:H7, a renegade strain of the normally harmless group, was first
identified. People in Michigan and Oregon were sickened by the
bacteria that caused bloody diarrhea and devastating kidney failure.
The organism attacks the lining of the colon, exposing blood vessels
and causing them to bleed. It is believed to reside normally in the
stomachs of cattle. It kills an estimated 61 American each year.
(WSJ, 7/15/96, p.B1)(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A4)(SFC,
10/15/03, p.A25)
1982-1989 Marian Elliott Koshland (d.1997 at 76)
held the UC Berkeley chair in the Dept. of Microbiology and
Immunology. She had discovered variations in the amino acid
composition of antibodies that explained how they recognized
invading organisms or other foreign material.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A21)
1983 Bayer, a German drug
maker, patented the active ingredient of the antibiotic Cipro.
(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)
1984 Feb 22, A 12-year-old
Houston boy known publicly only as "David," died 15 days after being
removed from the bubble for a bone-marrow transplant. He had spent
most his life in a plastic bubble because he had no immunity to
disease.
(AP, 2/22/04)
1984 Apr 22, The US Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) said French researchers had discovered that a
virus causes AIDS. Scientists identified a retrovirus named human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS.
(SSFC, 6/3/01, p.A20)(www.avert.org/his81_86.htm)
1984 Apr 23, US Health
Secretary Margaret Heckler said the AIDS-virus was identified as the
cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. [see Apr 21]
(http://tinyurl.com/yuvyv6)
(AP, 3/26/07)
1984 Oct 25, The genetic
organization of the Hepatitis B virus was published.
(www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=320225)
1984 In Oregon members of the
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult sprinkled Salmonella typhimurium
bacteria in supermarkets, salad bars and restaurant coffee creamers
near Portland. Over 750 people were sickened.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A9)(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.R1)
1984 Rabbit Calicivirus Disease
was 1st discovered among rabbits in China. It appeared in the US for
the 1st time in 2000.
(WSJ, 7/3/02, p.A1)
1985 Nov, The US FDA approved
imipenem, a penicillin-like drug.
(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/2px4jy)
1985 In California an outbreak
of listeria was linked to soft cheese made from raw milk produced in
Los Angeles. Of the 142 cases reported, 93 were in pregnant women or
their children. There were 48 deaths, including 20 fetuses.
(www.notmilk.com/forum/463.html)
1985 Listeria monocytogenes
became a major health concern during a contamination of
Mexican-style cheese made by Jalisco Mexican Products. It causes
listeriosis, which produces flu-like symptoms that can be deadly to
fetuses, and patients with compromised immune systems.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A17)
1985 Researchers isolated SIV,
the simian immunodeficiency virus.
(SSFC, 1/14/01, p.A14)
1986 The Univ. of Baghdad
purchased anthrax along with other strains of bacteria that cause
botulism and brucellosis from the American Type Culture Collection
of Manassas, Va.
(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.A6)
1987 Oct, The US FDA approved
Cipro, marketed by Bayer, as an antibiotic.
(www.prescriptionaccess.org/press/pressreleases?id=0014)(SSFC,
1/20/08, p.A10)
1987 Some 13,000 people fell
ill in Carrollton, Ga., from the cryptosporidium parasite in
contaminated tap water.
(SFC, 6/24/98, Z1 p.5)
1988 May 26, The New England
Journal of Medicine reported that the 1st NYC cases of Rocky
Mountain Spotted Fever struck 4 people between May and July of 1987.
{NYC, Medical}
(http://tinyurl.com/nsejy)
1988 Vancomycin-resistant
enterococcus (VRE) was first detected in Europe. The vancomycin
antibiotic was developed in 1958.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.C1,4)
1989 The Group O AIDS virus was
identified in West Africa. It had marked genetic differences from
the more common Group M strains that were responsible for a
worldwide pandemic.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A5)
1989 The Hepatitis C virus was
first isolated. It causes an infection of the liver that is usually
lifelong and incurable. Scientists in 1999 found evidence of the
virus in frozen blood samples from 1948.
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.A4)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A3)
1989 Merck Corp. announced the
discovery of the 3-dimensional structure of the enzyme protease. It
was seen as a promising target for attacking the virus that causes
AIDS.
(WSJ, 11/5/96, p.A1)
1989 There was an outbreak of
the deadly Ebola virus among 450 primates in Reston, Va.
(FB, 9/12/96, Neighbors p.1)
1990 Apr, The Aum Shinri Kyo
cult sent three trucks into central Tokyo to spray poisonous botulin
mists. The convoy then attacked US bases at Yokohama and Yokosuka.
The botulin did not work and the cult turned to use anthrax.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1990 The amoeba Balamuthia
mandrillaris was first discovered in a mandrill baboon. In 2001 it
was reported to have destroyed the brain of a 3-year-old girl in the
SF Bay area.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A1)(SFC, 4/21/01, p.A1)
1992 May 1, It was reported in
the WSJ that a new study indicated that peptic ulcers were caused by
a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori.
(WSJ, 10/24/05, p.A15)
1993 Mar, Drinking water in
Milwaukee became contaminated with the cryptosporidium bacterium and
more than 100 people died and some 400,000 got sick.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/24/98, Z1 p.5)(SFC,
8/1/98, p.A11)
1993 Jun, In Japan the Aum
Shinri Kyo cult pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and
created a cloud that would settle on victims, but it didn’t work.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1993 Jul, The Aum Shinri Kyo
cult again pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and shot
it near the Imperial Palace and around central Tokyo without
success.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1994 Sudden oak disease was
first reported in California. The specific pathogen responsible was
identified in 2000 as the fungus-like Phytophthora ramorum microbe.
Experts believed that it arrived in the state via the nursery trade.
By 2008 it was the world’s most quarantined plant pathogen.
(SFC, 4/17/08, p.A1)
1994 The Hendra virus was first
discovered and named for the Australian suburb where it was found in
an outbreak that killed a horse trainer and 13 horses. It causes
flulike symptoms that can lead to pneumonia or encephalitis. It is
believed to originate in fruit bats in Australia and mainly infects
horses.
(AP, 9/2/09)
1995 Mar 17, The federal
government approved the nation's first chicken pox vaccine, Varivax
by Merck & Co.
(AP, 3/17/00)
1995 May 9, Kinshasa, capital
of Zaire, was placed under quarantine after an outbreak of the Ebola
virus.
(AP, 5/9/00)
1995 Jul, The Ebola virus
killed 244 people in Kikwit, Zaire.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A11)
1995-2004 The amoeba called Naegleria fowleri
killed 23 people in the United States during this period. In 2007
health officials noticed a spike with six cases, three in Florida,
two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several
hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the
1960s. the killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the
nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
(AP, 9/29/07)
1996 May 9, Bacterial
meningitis has infected more than 100,000 people in West Africa over
the last 3 months and more than 10,000 have died. The epidemic has
been most intense in the region just south of the Sahara known as
the Sahel. The 1996 epidemic resulted in some 20,000 deaths. The
“meningitis belt” swept from Senegal to Ethiopia about every 10
years.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.C-5)(WSJ, 3/17/03, p.B4)
1996 Jun 27, A report from the
World Health Organization said that South Africa has the worst
tuberculosis problem in the world and that drug-resistant forms
(XDR-TB) of the disease were spreading rapidly.
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.A12)(Econ, 2/24/07, p.58)
1996 Aug 8, Food poisoning due
to E. coli bacteria in the city of Sakai, Japan, was attributed to
radish sprouts.
(WSJ, 7/8/96,p.A1)
1996 Aug 21, Today’s issue of
Science reported the 1,738 gene sequence of the organism
Methanococcus jannaschii that oceanographers in 1982 found in an
undersea volcanic vent and later classified as Archaea, distinct
from Prokarya and Eukarya.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A21)
1996 Congress tightened rules
on the distribution of pathogens following a frightening record by
the American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Va., of selling
dangerous germs.
(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.A6)
1996 Scientists discovered
bacteria living in a tank of nuclear waste. The bacteria, later
called extremophiles, had adapted to 15 times the dose that would
kill a human being.
(WSJ, 11/16/04, p.A1)
1997 May 9, In Hong Kong a
3-year-old boy became ill with the flu. He died May 21 and the flu
was identified as subtype H5N1, a bird flu.
(SFC, 2/26/01, p.A9)
1997 May 13, In Burundi an
outbreak of Typhus was reported. Some 20,000 cases in 3 northwest
provinces were reported by March, mostly in Hutu regroupment camps
set up by the Tutsi-led military.
(WSJ, 5/13/97, p.A1)
1997 Aug 5, It was reported
that a Yale Univ. research team led by Sidney Altman discovered a
way to turn off genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotic
drugs. Human testing was thought to be 5 years away.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A3)(WSJ, 8/5/97, p.A1)
1997 Aug 6, It was reported
that scientists had created the genetic blueprint for Helicobacter
pylori, a bacterium responsible for stomach ulcers.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A11)
1997 Aug 21, A hamburger recall
was extended to cover some 25 million pounds. The Hudson Foods Inc.,
of Rogers, Ark., closed its Nebraska beef-processing facility under
a "non-negotiable" recommendation by Agricultural Sec. Dan Glickman
due to E. coli poisonings in Colorado.
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A3)(AP, 8/21/98)
1997 Nov 22, From Venezuela it
was reported that 18,000 people were infected in an epidemic of
dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and that 34 had died this year.
Heavy rains allowed Aedes aegypti, the mosquito which carries anyone
of 4 dengue viruses, to breed in water containers left out in the
open. In 2006 over 500,000 cases of dengue were reported in Latin
America including 14,000 cases of DHF.
(SFC,11/22/97, p.A9)(Econ, 4/21/07, p.42)(Econ,
7/14/07, p.46)
1997 Dec 26, It was reported
that the US Centers for Disease Control had begun work on a “Bird
Flu” vaccine in response to the 9 confirmed cases and 4 deaths in
Hong Kong.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.D1)
1997 Dec 29, In Hong Kong the
government planned to start killing over 1.4 million chickens to
combat the new strain of avian flu. Four people had already died of
the illness.
(SFC, 12/29/97, p.A1)(AP, 12/29/98)
1997 Dec, In north-eastern
Kenya large numbers of cattle, goats and sheep began dying in
the Garissa district. A month later people began dying as the Rift
Valley Fever infected some 90,000 people. Hundreds died in 5
countries.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.83)
1997 A British team discovered
that pig viruses can infect human cells.
(WSJ, 8/28/00, p.B1)
1997 In Malaysia a virus struck
the village of Nipah and killed 105 people, most of whom were
involved in the hog-farming industry. Some 1.2 million hogs were
destroyed and the Nipah virus epidemic ran its course over 7 months.
The epidemic was later related to burning rain forests and bats
seeking new food sources that passed the virus to pigs that passed
it to humans. Most animals recovered but it was lethal to 40% of
humans.
(SFC, 9/28/99, p.A9)(SFC, 5/29/00, p.A4)(WSJ,
6/19/03, p.A1)
1998 Feb 19, In Henderson
federal officials arrested Larry Wayne Harris and William Job
Leavitt for possession of suspected anthrax bacterium. Harris had
earlier published the 131-page book: “Bacteriological Warfare: A
Major Threat to North America.” The substance turned out to be a
harmless veterinary vaccine. Harris was later given an additional 6
months probation.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A1,8)(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.A11)(SFC,
3/25/98, p.A3)
1998 Mar 10, U.S. Air Force and
Navy personnel in the Persian Gulf received vaccinations against
anthrax. In 2004 a federal judge ordered a halt to anthrax
vaccinations and ruled that the FDA had violated its own rules by
approving the vaccine in 2003.
(AP, 3/10/99)(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A4)
1998 Mar 19, A new product was
approved by the FDA to reduce salmonella in chickens. Preempt or
CF-3 was a mixture of beneficial microbes that would be sprayed onto
newly hatched chicks, and then ingested by the chicks to prevent
salmonella growth.
(SFC, 3/20/98, p.A4)
1998 Mar, The US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said sexual diseases such as
chlamydia were epidemic in the US and launched a campaign to raise
public awareness. 4 million new cases a year were being reported.
(SFC, 8/12/98, p.C16)
1998 May 29, I t was reported
that a salmonella strain impervious to 5 antibiotics was rampant in
Britain. Chickens were reported sold in Minnesota that were
contaminated with campylobacter resistant to a powerful antibiotic.
The high use of antibiotics by farmers was adding to the problem of
an increasing number of drug-resistant germs.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A8)
1998 May 15, Oysters from
Tomales Bay, Ca., were removed from market shelves due to an unknown
agent causing illness. the symptoms were similar to the Norwalk
virus that caused illnesses around New Orleans during the winter of
1996-1997, that was traced to human sewage.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A7)
1998 Jun 4, In Taiwan it was
reported that an airborne virus had killed 26 children in the last 6
weeks. Another 132 were hospitalized and as many as 9,000 were
infected. Efforts to fight the disease were being centralized.
(WSJ, 6/5/98, p.A1)
1998 Jun 10, It was reported
that scientists had decoded the DNA sequence for Mycobacterium
tuberculosis.
(SFC, 6/11/98, p.A2)
1998 Jun 23, In Chicago some
4,500 got sick from an outbreak of E. coli possibly due to
contaminated potato salad at Iwan’s Deli in Orland Park.
(SFC, 6/24/98, p.A9)
1998 Jun 23, In Georgia a
virulent E. coli, O157:H7, sickened at least 6 children after
playing in a Marietta water park.
(SFC, 6/24/98, p.A9)
1998 Jul 29-30, In Australia
giardia and cryptosporidium were found throughout the water supply
of Sydney. PM John Howard called the crises an international
embarrassment.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A11)
1998 Oct 23, Researchers
reported the complete genetic sequence of the bacteria chlamydia
trachomatis.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A3)
1998 Oct 29, An Oscar Mayer
meat packing plant in Michigan sliced and packaged products that
later killed 9 people and caused 3 stillbirths due to listeria
contamination.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A4)
1998 Dec 17, The CDC reported a
food-poisoning outbreak due to the listeria bacteria that killed 4
people and sickened 35. Hot dogs and cold cuts were suspected.
(WSJ, 12/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 22, The Bil Mar meat
packing plant in Michigan recalled 35 million pounds of hot dogs and
lunch meats following the deaths of 16 people due to the bacteria
Listeria monocytogenes. In Jan. another 30 million pounds were
recalled from the Thorn Apple Valley plant in Arkansas.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A7)
1998 In Uganda plant breeder
William Wagoira found stem rust on his crops. The fungal wheat rust
(Puccinia graminis) had not been seen since the Green Revolution. By
2010 the fungus had spread as far as Iran and South Africa and
scientists feared further spread.
(Econ, 7/3/10, p.57)
1999 Mar 26, In Uganda it was
reported that wheat stem-rust fungus had appeared on a crop. The
fungus killed nearly half the world's crop before the green
revolution of the 1950s. The black rust disease was named Ug99 and
by 2007 had jumped to Yemen. In 2008 it was confirmed in Iran. In
2008 Cornell Univ. received a $26.8 million grant from the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation to help combat the new strains of rust
disease.
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/3/08, p.A16)
1999 Sep 9, In NYC it was
reported that 3 people had died from mosquito-borne St. Louis
encephalitis in the last few weeks. The virus was later identified
as the West Nile Virus, never before reported in the Western
Hemisphere. 3 years later the virus reached California.
(SFC, 9/10/99, p.A3)(SFC, 9/28/99, p.A9)(Econ,
8/2/08, p.34)
1999 Sep 30, It was reported
that the Western oak beetle, P. pubipennis, and the oak ambrosia
beetle, M. scutellare, were decimating black, tan and coast live oak
trees across northern California. Sudden Oak Death was later
attributed to a fungus of the genus Phytophthora. The pathogen was
later reported to be related to a fungus that was destroying Port
Orford cedars in the Pacific Northwest.
(SFC, 9/30/99, p.A21,26)(SFC, 7/15/00,
p.A17)(SFC, 8/1/00, p.A13)(SFC, 9/23/00, p.A1)
1999 Nov 27, It was reported
that at least 26 people had died recently in Phrae province,
Thailand, from leptospirosis, a disease transmitted by rat urine.
Farmers not wearing boots and gloves in their fields were
vulnerable.
(SFC, 11/27/99, p.A17)
1999 Jared Diamond authored
“Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.”
(www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552)
1999 The Japanese bubble snail
was first identified in the San Francisco Bay. It carried a
parasite, a microscopic flatworm, that caused swimmer’s itch, i.e.
cercarial dermatitis.
(SFC, 9/30/10,
p.A12)(www.cdc.gov/eid/content/16/9/1357.htm)
1999 Hepatitis C virus was
believed to have infected some 170 million people worldwide.
(Econ, 11/1/03, p.75)
1999 Researchers began
introducing phorid species in Texas in 1999. As many as 23 phorid
species with pathogens attack fire ants to keep their population and
movements under control. Fire ants cost the Texas economy about $1
billion annually by damaging circuit breakers and other electrical
equipment.
(http://tinyurl.com/ob57v2)
1999 The fungus Cryptococcus
gattii, normally found in Australia and other tropical zones, was
discovered on Vancouver Island, Canada. By 2007 at least 8 people
had died from infection and another 163 sickened.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A11)
2000 Mar, Health Canada
quarantined the country’s sperm banks after a woman contracted
chlamydia from a donor sample.
(SSFC, 3/25/01, p.C4)
2000 Jun 9, It was reported
that some 5 dozen intravenous drug users in Scotland, Ireland and
England had died since April from a mysterious illness not yet
identified. The culprit was later identified as Clostridium novyi
Type A.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.D3)(SFC, 6/15/00, p.A19)
2000 Jul 28, The US FDA
approved Cipro for inhalational anthrax.
(www.lewrockwell.com/orig/sardi8.html)
2000 Aug 3, It was reported
that scientists had developed the genetic blueprint of the cholera
bacterium.
(SFC, 8/3/00, p.A10)
2000 Aug 31, It was reported
that malaria researchers had identified the mechanism by which the
parasite feeds on blood cells.
(WSJ, 8/31/00, p.A1)
2000 Aug, 78 4-man teams in the
Eco-Challenge Sabah encountered flooded rivers over a 2-week race in
Malaysian Borneo. A number later found themselves infected with
leptospirosis.
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.A12)
2000 Sep 19, Researchers
reported for the 1st time that a new vaccine was effective against
staph infections.
(WSJ, 9/20/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 14, In Uganda it was
reported that at least 30 people had died in recent weeks of a
hemorrhagic fever possibly caused by the Ebola or Marburg virus.
(SFC, 10/14/00, p.A16)
2000 Oct 22, Death from the
Ebola fever climbed to 54 In Uganda as health officials continued a
village by village search for people with contact to the virus.
(SFC, 10/23/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct 26, The US FDA planned
to ban 2 fluoroquinolone antibiotics used by poultry farmers due to
fears that humans might become infected with germs that resist
treatment.
(SFC, 10/27/00, p.A3)
2000 Nov 12, Uganda confirmed a
new case of Ebola in Masindi, the 3rd district to confirm the deadly
virus.
(SFC, 11/13/00, p.A14)
2000 Dec 5, Uganda Dr. Matthew
Lokwiya, who diagnosed the Ebola outbreak 2 months earlier, died
from the disease.
(WSJ, 12/6/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 8, The Uganda victims
with Ebola reached 400 including 160 dead.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.A18)
2000 Wyeth introduced Prevnar,
a vaccine to protect children against 7 strains of bacteria that can
cause ear infections, pneumonia and meningitis. In 2007 researchers
found a strain of bacteria that can cause ear infections, serotype
19A, that was resistance to all antibiotics approved for children.
(WSJ, 10/17/07, p.D8)
2001 Jan 20, Dr. Charles
Merieux, virologist and founder of the Merieux Laboratory, died at
age 94 in Lyon, France. He helped produce the Salk vaccine
cultivated in minced monkey kidney tissue. He also produced a
vaccine against a meningitis strain that killed 4,000 people in
Brazil in 1974.
(SFC, 1/27/01, p.A24)
2001 May 6, It was reported
that 1 in every 1000 Russians has tuberculosis.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.A15)
2001 May 21, Joerg C. Tiller of
MIT said a new polymer, called hexyl-PVP, could be used as a surface
coating and was able to kill common disease-causing organisms.
(SFC, 5/22/01, p.A6)
2001 May 29, Epidural cortisone
shots at the Sierra SurgiCenter in Walnut Creek, Ca., caused 2
deaths from contamination that led to meningitis. A batch of
betamethasone steroid was contaminated with serratia bacteria.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A1)(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Sep 18, Letters postmarked
in Trenton, N.J., and later tested positive for anthrax, were sent
to the New York Post and NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw.
(AP, 9/18/02)
2001 Sep 28, Dr. Kenneth M.
Berry of Pittsburgh filed a patent application for a system
responsive to bioterrorism attacks. In 2004 the FBI probed him in
relation to investigations on letters containing anthrax.
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.A9)
2001 Oct 5, Bob Stevens (63),
photo editor for the Sun tabloid, died of anthrax. Anthrax spores
were later found on his computer keyboard in Lantana. This was the
1st of a series of cases in Florida, New York, New Jersey and
Washington.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A10)(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D7)(AP,
10/5/02)
2001 Oct 8, A 2nd case of
anthrax was reported in Ernesto Blanco (73), a co-worker of the man
who died Oct 5 in Florida.
(SFC, 10/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 9, Letters postmarked
in Trenton, N.J., were sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy;
the letters later tested positive for anthrax.
(AP, 10/9/02)
2001 Oct 9, The 2 anthrax cases
in Florida were reported to probably have been caused by an
intentional release of the deadly bacteria.
(SFC, 10/10/01, p.A4)
2001 Oct 10, In Florida a 3rd
case of anthrax was identified in a 35-year-old woman who worked in
the same office as Robert Stevens. The strain was reported to match
one from Iowa in the 1950s commonly used by lab researchers.
(SFC, 10/11/01, p.A4,5)
2001 Oct 12, NBC announced that
an assistant to anchorman Tom Brokaw had contracted the skin form of
anthrax after opening a "threatening" letter to her boss that
contained a suspicious powder.
(SFC, 10/13/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/12/02)
2001 Oct 13, Anthrax was
confirmed in 3 US states. In Florida 5 more employees tested
positive; in Nevada a letter sent to a Microsoft office tested
positive; and in NYC a letter sent to NBC News tested positive.
(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 15, Anthrax in a
letter to a Reno Microsoft office was reported to be from Malaysia.
2 anthrax-tainted letters were reported to have been mailed from
Trenton, New Jersey and 2 postal employees there showed symptoms.
Anthrax spores were in a letter deliver to a Senate office.
Officials announced that a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle had tested positive for anthrax, and that the infant son of
an ABC News producer in New York had developed skin anthrax.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A16)(AP,
10/15/02)
2001 Oct 16, A wing of the US
Senate building was closed following confirmation that a letter to
Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., carried anthrax. It was later found that
the anthrax contained the additive bentonite to enhance suspension
in air. 12 Senate offices were closed as hundreds of staffers
underwent anthrax tests.
(SFC, 10/17/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A1)(WSJ,
10/26/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/16/02)
2001 Oct 17, Federal officials
reported that the anthrax strains in New York and Florida appeared
to be identical. The House and 6 congressional office buildings were
closed for tests after over 30 Senate staff members tested positive
for exposure to spores.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 18, CBS News announced
that an employee in Dan Rather's office had tested positive for skin
anthrax.
(AP, 10/18/02)
2001 Oct 18, Two new cases of
anthrax were reported in New Jersey.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 18, The FBI and Postal
Service announced a $1 million reward for information leading to the
arrest of anthrax mailings.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A16)
2001 Oct 19, The FBI identified
the Trenton, NJ, mailbox from which the anthrax letters were sent to
NYC and Washington. Two more people were reported to be infected
bringing the total to 8.
(SFC, 10/20/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 20, Traces of anthrax
were found in a US House of Representatives mail room. This became
the 3rd Capital Hill building infected.
(SSFC, 10/21/01, p.A3)(AP, 10/20/02)
2001 Oct 21, Thomas L. Morris
Jr. (55), a DC postal worker diagnosed with the deadly inhalation
form of anthrax, died. Officials began testing thousands of postal
employees.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/24/01, p.A1)(AP,
10/22/06)
2001 Oct 22, A second
Washington DC postal worker, Joseph P. Curseen (47), died of
inhalation anthrax.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/24/01, p.A1)(AP,
10/22/02)
2001 Oct 23, President Bush
announced he had authorized money for improved post office security
following the deaths of two postal workers from inhalation anthrax.
(AP, 10/23/02)
2001 Oct 23, Traces of anthrax
were found at an off-site facility that handled mail for the White
House.
(SFC, 10/24/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 24, The US government
arranged to buy 100 million Cipro tablets from Bayer for 95 cents
each. The tablets were for anthrax. US Postmaster General John
Potter told Americans “There are no guaranties that mail is safe.”
He warned people to wash their hands after handling mail.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.D1)(SSFC, 9/10/06, p.E4)
2001 Oct 25, A State Dept. mail
worker in Virginia was diagnosed with the inhalational form of
anthrax.
(SFC, 10/26/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 26, Anthrax was found
in the offices of 3 lawmakers in the Longworth House Office building
on Capital Hill. The Supreme Court was shut down to test for anthrax
spores.
(SFC, 10/27/01, p.A8)
2001 Oct 27, In Washington, the
search for deadly anthrax widened to thousands of businesses and 30
mail distribution centers.
(AP, 10/27/02)
2001 Oct 28, The CDC reported a
13th case of anthrax in a New Jersey postal worker. Spores were
found at the mail center in Landover, Md.
(SFC, 10/29/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 29, A hospital worker
in NY and a woman who handled mail in New Jersey were found to have
anthrax. Since Oct 4 a total of 37 people have tested positive for
exposure and 15 have contracted the disease.
(SFC, 10/30/01, p.A8)
2001 Oct 31, The US Consulate
in Lahore, Pakistan, received a letter that was later confirmed to
contain anthrax.
(SFC, 11/7/01, p.A10)
2001 Oct 31, Kathy Nguyen (61),
a NYC hospital worker, died of anthrax. She was the 4th person to
perish in a spreading wave of bioterrorism. The source of infection
remained a mystery.
(SFC, 11/1/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/31/02)
2001 Nov 1, Anthrax spores were
found in 4 mailrooms in Rockville, Md., a postal facility in Kansas
City, 3 new locations in a Manhattan processing center and a 6th
postal facility in Florida.
(WSJ, 11/2/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 2, A 17th case of
anthrax was reported in a NY Post employee.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.A3)
2001 Nov 4, It was reported
that the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur cited bin Laden as
possibly possessing an arsenal of biochemical weapons. US
intelligence sources were cited that bin Laden purchased
laboratories from the former Yugoslavia, Ebola virus from former
Soviet stockpiles, botulism from the Czech Republic, anthrax from
North Korea and the assistance of chemists and biologists from the
Ukraine.
(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.A25)
2001 Nov 5, Baxter said its
dialysis filters appear to have played a role in the deaths of 53
patients in Texas, Nebraska, and 6 countries in Europe, south
America and Asia.
(WSJ, 11/6/01, p.A3)
2001 Nov 10, Traces of anthrax
were reported in offices of the Hart and Longworth government
buildings in Washington DC.
(SSFC, 11/11/01, p.A7)
2001 Nov 11, A Pakistani
newspaper (Ausaf) published the second part of an interview in which
Osama bin Laden was quoted as saying he had nothing to do with the
anthrax attacks in the United States, and declared he would never
allow himself to be captured.
(AP, 11/11/02)
2001 Nov 11-2001 Nov 16, In St.
Cloud, Minn., three healthy men died following knee surgeries from
infections of Clostridium sordellii.
(SFC, 11/28/01, p.A5)
2001 Nov 13, An anthrax tainted
letter was received by a pediatrician in Santiago. It was postmarked
from Switzerland and marked for return to Florida. It was actually
mailed from NY through a NY-based subsidiary of the Swiss Post
office. The letter was later believed to have been contaminated in a
lab.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.A4)(SFC, 11/24/01, p.A9)(WSJ,
11/28/01, p.A4)(WSJ, 11/29/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 15, Investigators in
Florida said anthrax was found throughout the 68,000-square-foot
America Media building in Boca Raton, where the 1st case was
identified.
(SFC, 11/16/01, p.A17)
2001 Nov 16, An anthrax laced
letter was found in quarantined congressional mail addressed to Sen.
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). It was found to contain billions of
spores, enough to kill 100,000 people.
(SFC, 11/17/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/21/01, p.A8)(SFC,
11/26/01, p.A5)
2001 Nov 21, Ottilie W.
Lundgren (94) of Oxford, Conn., died of inhalational anthrax in a
case that baffled investigators.
(SFC, 11/21/01, p.A10)(AP, 11/21/02)
2001 Dec 2, An outbreak of
Ebola virus hit Gabon with the 1st death in Ekata, about 5 miles
from the Congo border. Within weeks at least 15 people died. The
virus spread to Congo and movement in the area was restricted.
(SFC, 12/21/01, p.A5)
2001 Dec 5, The FBI arrested
escaped fugitive Clayton Lee Waagner in St. Louis. Waagner was
suspected of mailing as many as 550 anthrax hoax letters to abortion
clinics. He was also wanted for bank robbery and other offenses. In
2002 Waagner was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/6/01, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/6/01, p.A1)(SFC,
1/26/02, p.A10)
2001 Dec 6, Anthrax tainted
mail turned up at a sorting site outside the Federal building in
Washington DC. It had been received Dec 5.
(WSJ, 12/7/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 16, It was reported
that all the anthrax spores mailed to Capital Hill were identical to
stocks from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. (USAMRIID), maintained since 1980.
(SSFC, 12/16/01, p.A9)
2001 Dec 17, The Bush
administration announced that the anthrax attacks most likely
originated from a domestic source.
(SFC, 12/18/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 18, It was reported
that malaria scientists have engineered mice that produce vaccine in
their milk.
(WSJ, 12/18/01, p.A1)
2001 The metapneumovirus was
discovered by researchers in Rotterdam. The calculated that every
child catches the virus by age 5.
(SFC, 9/17/03, p.A7)
2002 Feb 14, It was reported
that scientists at NIH had developed the 1st vaccine effective
against staph bacteria.
(SFC, 2/14/02, p.A4)
2002 Feb 23, It was reported
that 5 people were confirmed with plague in Himachal Pradesh, India.
(SFC, 2/23/02, p.A24)
2002 Feb, Dr Wakefield and
Professor O'Leary published a paper in the journal Molecular
Pathology which suggested a possible link between the measles virus
and bowel disease in children with developmental disorders. The
study set out to investigate whether children with developmental
disorders such as autism and a bowel disorder also had the measles
virus in their gut. It found traces of the virus in the guts of 75
children out of 91 with bowel disease, but in only five out of 70
healthy children. The researchers theorized that the virus may act
as a trigger, leading to problems with the immune system. Dr
Wakefield said most of the children in the study had had MMR, though
a few had had the single vaccine. He and his colleague emphasized
that it would be wrong to jump to any hasty conclusions about MMR
causing either bowel disease or developmental disorders such as
autism. In 2010 Dr. Wakefield was banned from practicing medicine in
Britain.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1808956.stm)(SFC, 5/25/10, p.A2)
2002 Feb, A team from the
Royal Free Hospital - where Dr Wakefield carried out his initial
research - published a study on the British Medical Journal website
saying there is no link between MMR and autism. The team looked at
almost 500 children with autism born between 1979 and 1998. It found
the proportion of children with developmental regression (autism) or
bowel disorders did not change significantly over that time.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1808956.stm)
2002 Feb, The W135 strain of
meningitis from the Middle East was identified for the 1st time in
Africa in Burkina Faso and by Sep some 12,000 people were infected
with 1,500 deaths.
(SFC, 9/20/02, p.A12)
2002 Mar 5, It was reported
that Cipro resistant gonorrhea had turned up on the West Coast of
the US.
(WSJ, 3/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Apr 18, Researchers in
Pittsburgh reported a strain of Group A streptococci resistant to
erythromycin (the macrolide class of antibiotics).
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A4)(WSJ, 4/18/02, p.A1)
2002 May 6, It was reported
that German researchers had found a new class of ultra-tiny
microbes: a nano-size hyperthermophilic archeon, tinier than
mycoplasma but larger than viruses.
(SFC, 5/6/02, p.A4)
2002 May 7, It was reported
that strain of Gonorrhea resistant to antibiotics had reached the
mainland US after migrating from Hawaii and Asia.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A5)
2002 Jun 15, In the Republic of
Congo it was reported that 5 people had died from an outbreak of
ebola, the 2nd outbreak in the region this year.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.C10)
2002 Jul 11, US scientists
financed by the Pentagon announced that they had synthesized a virus
from scratch for the 1st time. They built a polio virus relying only
on genetic sequence information publicly available.
(SFC, 7/12/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 2, In Louisiana Gov.
Mike Foster declared a state of emergency after West Nile virus
killed 4 residents and infected another 58.
(SFC, 8/3/02, p.A3)
2002 Aug 11, Dr. Steven J.
Hatfill, a bioweapons expert under scrutiny for anthrax-laced
letters, fiercely denied any involvement and said he had cooperated
with the investigation. He was eventually exonerated and given a
$5.8 million settlement from the US government after years of their
harassing him. Investigators on June 27, 2008, announced that the
anthrax attacks had been carried out by another government
scientist, Bruce Edwards Ivins, whom they concluded had acted alone.
(AP,
8/11/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hatfill)
2002 Aug 22, Researchers
reported a new enzyme to treat victims of an anthrax attack and to
help detect the spores.
(SFC, 8/22/02, p.A1)
2002 Sep 14, In Congo DRC it
was reported that some 1,200 people had died from a cholera epidemic
and that another 18,000 were infected.
(SFC, 9/14/02, p.A20)
2002 Oct 15, It was reported
that duct tape is effective in removing warts when worn over the
wart for a number of days.
(SFC, 10/15/02, p.A2)
2002 Oct 15, A listeria
outbreak blamed for at east 7 deaths in the northeast was traced to
a Wampler Foods plant in Franconia, Pa.
(SFC, 10/16/02, p.A5)
2002 Oct 21, Scientists
reported a new immunoassay for mad cow disease that takes about a
year for results.
(SFC, 10/21/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 24, It was reported
that over 8,000 backyard poultry had been killed in southern
California to stop the spread of Exotic Newcastle disease. The
deadly avian infection last surfaced in California the 1970s when
some 12 million birds were destroyed.
(SFC, 10/24/02, p.G2)(SFC, 10/26/02, p.A3)
2002 Nov 19, It was reported
that the Holland America cruise ship Amsterdam was in its 4th week
of battling the Norwalk gastrointestinal virus.
(WSJ, 11/19/02, p.B1)
2002 Nov 21, Intensive cleaning
began aboard the cruise ship Disney Magic after over 100 passengers
fell sick from an unknown stomach virus.
(SFC, 11/23/02, p.A2)
2002 Nov 21, Merck published a
study of vaccine that prevents cervical cancers caused by human
papilloma virus (HPV) that could be available by 2006.
(WSJ, 11/21/02, p.A1)(SFC, 11/21/02, p.A1)
2002 Vancomycin resistant
strains of Staphylococcus aureus emerged.
(NG, 11/04, p.21)
2003 Jan 24, The Bush
administration’s smallpox vaccine program was launched in
Connecticut with 4 doctors getting shots.
(SFC, 1/25/03, p.A4)(WSJ, 1/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 9, In China Xinhua’s
first SARS report was issued for leaders’ eyes only. By this time
there were already some 300 cases and 5 deaths dating back to
November 2002.
(Econ, 6/19/10, p.43)
2003 Mar 19, Doctors in Hong
Kong reportedly identified the deadly pneumonia virus as belonging
to the paramyxoviridae family. The severe acute respiratory illness
(SARS) had killed at least 11 people and left hundreds ill. The
outbreak is believed to have began in southern China in November.
Later reports held that it could be a coronavirus, part of a group
that cause the common cold. Many people treated with corticosteroids
later developed an irreversible bone disease called avascular
necrosis. By July 12, 2003, SARS killed 812 people worldwide.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A8)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)(WSJ,
4/3/03, p.B1)(WSJ, 12/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 22, Scientists believe
they have found the virus responsible for the mystery SARS virus and
announced a test to diagnose it.
(AP, 3/23/03)
2003 Mar 23, A Maryland nurse
died 5 days after being vaccinated for smallpox.
(SFC, 3/26/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 27, It was reported
that the SARS disease had killed 50 people and infected some 1,300
in 13 countries.
(WSJ, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 29, Italian Dr. Carlo
Urbani (46), a WHO expert on communicable diseases, died of SARS in
Thailand, where he was being treated after becoming infected while
working in Vietnam. Urbani was the 1st doctor to identify SARS.
(AP, 3/29/03)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 31, Hong Kong
authorities quarantined more than 200 other residents in an
apartment block in an effort to contain the SARS virus.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Apr 4, It was reported
that Oxford Univ. scientists had developed a new test for TB that
looked for the activation of T-cells.
(SFC, 4/4/03, p.A15)
2003 Apr 4, Chinese experts in
hard-hit Guangdong province told the scientists they have found a
rare form of airborne chlamydia in some of their SARS patients,
raising the possibility that more than one germ may be involved.
Other Chinese cases suggest the disease might be passed by touching
something tainted by a sick person's mucous or saliva.
(AP, 4/5/03)
2003 Apr 17, A Dutch
veterinarian (57) died from avian influenza 2 days after working on
a farm where animals were infected with the bird flu. He was
believed to be the 1st victim of the current epidemic.
(WSJ, 4/21/03, p.A10)
2003 Apr 26, It was reported
that a methillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) had begun
infecting healthy people through skin contact.
(SFC, 4/26/03, B8)
2003 Apr 29, California
biologists reported that some 92 southern sea otters had died since
the beginning of the year between Point Conception and Half Moon
Bay. A cat parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, was cited as one factor
weakening the animals.
(SFC, 4/30/03, A1)(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A1)
2003 May 4, New lab studies
reported that the SARS virus can survive outside an infected body
for hours to days.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.A1)
2003 May 21, Taiwan reported 35
new cases of SARS for a total of 418 with 52 deaths.
(SFC, 5/22/03, p.A3)
2003 May 23, Researchers from
China and Hong Kong identified a coronavirus in 3 wild mammals, palm
civets, a raccoon dog and a ferret badger, sold in the live-animal
food markets of South China.
(SFC, 5/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Jun 13, Wisconsin state
officials reported that probable 18 cases of monkeypox all came from
one prairie dog.
(SFC, 6/14/03, p.A6)
2003 Jun 20, In China Guangdong
health officials reported 211 encephalitis cases with 18 children
killed. 100,000 children were vaccinated as a precaution.
(SFC, 6/21/03, p.A5)
2003 Jul 5, The WHO removed
Taiwan from its list of SARS-infected areas and declared a
provisional victory over the epidemic, which had killed 812 people
over 5 continents. The economic losses from SARS was later estimated
at about $200 billion. SARS was later classified as one of a number
of zoonoses, i.e. diseases that come from animals.
(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.A3)(Econ, 11/19/05, p.84)
2003 Jul 7, The CDC confirmed
the year's 1st case of West Nile Virus, which killed 284 in the US
in 2002.
(SFC, 7/8/03, p.A6)
2003 Aug 7, Scientists reported
a new vaccine that was successful against the Ebola virus in
monkeys.
(WSJ, 8/7/03, p.D6)
2003 Sep 8, Singapore health
officials confirmed that a local patient has tested positive for
severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, the 1st new case of the
disease in over 5 months.
(AP, 9/8/03)
2003 Sep 29, In Japan a
23-month-old bull tested positive for new strain of mad cow disease.
A quarantined of 604 cows followed to prevent the spread of
the disease.
(AP, 10/8/03)
2003 Oct 24, Nigerian health
workers began an emergency drive to immunize some 15 million
children against polio. Some 192 cases were currently active.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.A3)
2003 Nov 3, Spanish authorities
closed the border with the British colony of Gibraltar before the
arrival of a virus-stricken cruise ship carrying some 2,000
passengers. More than 400 passengers on the ship fell ill with a
norovirus after the ship left Southampton, England, for a
Mediterranean voyage on Oct. 20.
(AP, 11/3/03)
2003 Nov 14, In Pittsburgh,
Pa., a 3rd person died from an outbreak of hepatitis A that infected
over 500 people. They all had recently eaten at a Chi-Chi's Mexican
mall restaurant.
(SFC, 11/15/03, p.A3)(AP, 11/16/03)
2003 Dec 4, In Kisumu, Kenya,
Tommy Thompson, US Sec. of Health and Human Services, dedicated a
new $6.4 million field laboratory to be operated by the CDC. It was
the largest of its kind in Africa. The local TB and malaria rates
were among the highest in the world.
(SFC, 12/5/03, p.A5)
2003 Dec 27, China announced
its first suspected SARS case since July.
(AP, 12/27/03)
2003 The ViroChip, invented by
Dr. Joseph DeRisi (33) of UC San Francisco, gained attention when it
spotted the virus that causes the epidemic form of pneumonia called
SARS.
(SFC, 9/10/08, p.B4)
2003 Myanmar reported 42% of
the world’s official malaria deaths. WHO statistics were not very
accurate as half of Africa’s countries did not submit any data.
(Econ, 12/9/06, p.86)
2003 In Sudan a study indicated
that AIDS had infected about 1.6% of the population. By 2009 the
number was estimated to be approaching 3%.
(Econ, 7/4/09, p.42)
2004 Jan 5, China confirmed its
first SARS case since an outbreak of the disease was contained in
July and authorities ordered the emergency slaughter of some 10,000
civet cats and related species after tests linked a virus found in
the animals to the patient.
(AP, 1/5/04)
2004 Jan 5, Norman Heatley
(92), a scientist whose pioneering work on penicillin production
helped save countless lives, died in Oxford, England. It was Heatley
and his Oxford University colleagues who produced enough for the
first clinical tests on humans.
(AP, 1/17/04)(SFC, 1/19/04, p.B4)
2004 Jan 21, Hong Kong
officials reported that Avian influenza was detected near 2 chicken
farms. 5 people in Vietnam had already died from the recent
outbreak.
(SFC, 1/22/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 26, Pakistan joined
the list of countries affected by the bird flu disease that has
sparked mass chicken culls across the region.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 26, A 6-year-old Thai
boy became Asia's seventh confirmed bird flu fatality.
(AP, 1/26/04)
2004 Jan 27, Global health
officials listed 6 countries with confirmed cases of H5N1 avian flu.
These included Cambodia, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and
Vietnam.
(WSJ, 1/28/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 1, China reported 5
more cases of the avian influenza virus.
(SFC, 2/2/04, p.A4)
2004 Feb 10, NYC said nearly 4%
of men age 40-49 in the city have AIDS or are infected with HIV.
(WSJ, 2/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 14, It was reported
that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated $82.9 million
to the Areas Global TB Vaccine Foundation for the development of a
tuberculosis vaccine.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 20, In Texas a strain
of avian flu was reported in Gonzales County. Further checks
revealed that it was highly pathogenic, but posed little risk to
humans.
(SFC, 2/24/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 26, It was reported
that scientists had identified a protein, TRIM5-alpha, that shields
rhesus monkeys from the AIDS virus.
(WSJ, 2/26/04, p.D4)
2004 Mar 24, World TB Day. TB
killed and estimated 2-3 million people per year.
(SFC, 3/24/04, p.B9)
2004 May 24, The WHO confirmed
an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus has killed four people in
south Sudan.
(AFP, 5/24/04)
2004 Jul 8, It was reported
that a strain of syphilis has proved resistant to azithromycin.
(WSJ, 7/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Aug 21, In Ohio health
officials said cases of gastrointestinal illness had risen to 510
from people in the Put-in-Bay resort area.
(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.A3)
2004 Sep 8, In Thailand a young
man died from bird flu and increased fears of a avian influenza
pandemic. Asian deaths from bird flu for the year totaled 28.
(WSJ, 9/10/04, p.A2)
2004 Sep 17, Officials in
Singapore reported that a soil-borne bacterial infection called
melioidosis has killed 24 people there this year, making it more
deadly than SARS or bird flu. The illness, also known as Whitmore's
Disease, is listed by the U.S. government as a potential biological
weapon but Singapore government officials said there was no sign it
had been spread intentionally.
(Reuters, 9/17/04)
2004 Sep 27, In Thailand
officials announced that a case of avian-flu was possibly caused by
human-to-human transmission.
(SFC, 9/28/04, p.A3)
2004 Oct 5, Britain pulled the
license of a Liverpool factory responsible for manufacturing half of
Chiron Corp.’s US flu vaccine supply due to contamination by the
bacteria serratia.
(SFC, 10/6/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/7/04, p.B6)
2004 Oct 19, A Thailand tiger
zoo housing hundreds of the big cats was shut down as bird flu tests
confirmed 23 tigers had died of the virus since Oct 14, and another
30 had fallen ill. They caught the flu from feeding on chicken
carcasses.
(AFP, 10/20/04)(Econ, 4/16/05, p.36)
2004 Oct 27, Nigeria's
state-owned news agency reported that an outbreak of measles in a
remote Nigerian village had killed a dozen people. Sub-Saharan
Africa accounts for 500,000 deaths from measles every year.
(AP, 10/27/04)
2004 Nov 9, It was reported
that repeated injections of paromomycin, a low cost antibiotic,
could cure the parasitic disease black fever, also known as visceral
leishmaniasis.
(SFC, 11/9/04, p.A6)
2004 Nov 18, US Army doctors
said some 100 soldiers wounded in the Mideast and Afghanistan had
come down with rare, treatment resistant blood infections.
(WSJ, 11/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Dec 20, SF officials
warned that the sexually transmitted disease lymphogranuloma
venereum (LGV) had begun to turn up locally. The disease was a form
of chlamydia and required a 3-week course of antibiotics for cure.
(SFC, 12/21/04, p.B4)
2005 Jan 5, It was reported
that PolyMedix, a research firm in Philadelphia, was targeting
bacteria with synthetic molecules that prevented the development of
resistance.
(WSJ, 1/5/05, p.B2A)
2005 Jan 25, The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $750 million over 10 years to
support the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
(WSJ, 1/25/05, p.D6)
2005 Feb 10, Saudi Arabia
confirmed a 2nd case of polio from 2004 and feared pilgrims to Mecca
might spread the disease.
(SFC, 2/11/05, p.A13)
2005 Feb 11, Health officials
in NYC issued a nationwide alert over a new AIDS HIV strain that is
immune to just about all antiretroviral drugs.
(SFC, 2/12/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 21, It was reported
that measles in Nigeria had killed 529 people this year.
(WSJ, 3/21/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 22, Officials from the
ministry of health and the World Health Organization (WHO) said a
deadly haemorrhagic fever that has claimed the lives of 96 people,
mainly children, in Angola's northern Uige province has been
identified as the rare Marburg virus.
(www.meritcare.com/news/world/viewarticle.asp?id=18843)
2005 Apr 8, Angola’s death toll
from the Marburg virus, which has no effective treatment, rose to
181 with no signs of abating. Doctors without Borders urged the
government to close the regional hospital at Uige to help contain
the spread. Suspected cases have been identified in 7 provinces.
(SFC, 4/9/05, p.A8)(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.A5)
2005 Apr 11, Maurice Hilleman
(85), US pioneer vaccine research scientist, died of cancer in New
Jersey. He helped develop vaccines for mumps, measles, chicken pox
and other childhood scourges.
(SFC, 4/12/05, p.B5)
2005 Apr 14, It was reported
that the bird flu virus was found in some 70% of a random sample of
ducks and geese in Vietnam’s southern Mekong Delta, and in 21% of
sampled chickens.
(WSJ, 4/14/05, p.A14)
2005 Apr 16, It was reported
that Laszlo Kish and Maria King of Texas A&M had devised a new
technique for identifying small quantities of bacteria in minutes
using a combination of virology ad microelectronics.
(Econ, 4/16/05, p.70)
2005 May 4, In China 178 birds
were found dead at Bird Island in Qinghai province in a lake that
served as a major area for research on migratory water fowl. They
were killed by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu virus. The number
of dead birds was later raised to 1,500 with bar-headed geese among
the most dead.
(WSJ, 5/23/05, p.A11)(SFC, 7/7/05, p.A5)
2005 May 4, Chinese authorities
confined residents in Yanqing, 50 miles north of Beijing, to their
homes following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.
Numerous farms were put under quarantine.
(WSJ, 5/24/05, p.A10)
2005 May 13, Indonesia reported
that researchers had found a strain of bird flu in pigs on Java, and
feared the virus could spread to humans.
(SSFC, 5/15/05, p.A14)
2005 May 21, China ordered
emergency measures to prevent an outbreak of avian flu after
investigators said migratory birds found dead in a western province
this month were killed by the virus.
(AP, 5/21/05)
2005 May 26, China’s Xinhua
news agency reported that China has developed vaccines that block
the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among birds and
mammals.
(AP, 5/26/05)
2005 May 30, Indonesia's first
polio outbreak in a decade widened with two new cases reported, as
the government kicked off a massive eradication campaign that aims
to vaccinate 6.4 million children in one day.
(AP, 5/30/05)
2005 Jun 6, Scientists reported
success with monkeys in using vaccines to fend off the Ebola and
Marburg viruses.
(SFC, 6/6/05, p.A2)
2005 Jun 11, US officials said
a cow had tested positive for mad cow disease in November, opening
the door to possible changes in testing procedures in the US beef
industry. The cow was later identified as being calved in Texas in
1993.
(AP, 6/11/05)(WSJ, 6/30/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 15, Indonesia reported
its 1st human case of bird flu.
(SFC, 6/16/05, p.A3)
2005 Jun 15, Vietnam reported 6
new cases of bird flu in the past week.
(WSJ, 6/15/05, p.A15)
2005 Jun 20, In Vietnam
officials said 2 more people from northern Vietnam have been
sickened with bird flu, and thousands of chickens have dropped dead
in the south.
(AP, 6/20/05)
2005 Jun 21, US researchers
said a common virus that is harmless to people can destroy cancerous
cells in the body and might be developed into a new cancer therapy.
The adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, infects an estimated 80
percent of the population.
(Reuters, 6/22/05)
2005 Jun 21, Austria’s Health
Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat announced a cow in an alpine farm
Austria has been found to be infected with mad cow disease.
(AP, 6/21/05)
2005 Jun 25, Taiwan reimposed a
ban on imports of American beef after the US confirmed its second
case of mad cow disease.
(AP, 6/25/05)
2005 Jun 30, A Cambodia doctor
reported that 2 infants have died in Cambodia from influenza, part
of an outbreak that has hospitalized more than 1,000 children. He
said the illness appears to be a form of human flu, not the avian
influenza.
(AP, 6/30/05)
2005 Jun, NYC doctors reported
outbreaks of imipenem resistant Klebsiella.
(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)
2005 Jul 5, It was reported
that French and South African researchers had found that
circumcision reduces the risk of AIDS by 70%.
(WSJ, 7/5/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 26, Chinese health
officials reported that over the last 4 weeks an unidentified
illness has killed 19 farmers and sickened 80 in southwestern China
after they butchered sick pigs or sheep. The pigs in question were
infected with streptococcus bacteria, a common pathogen in humans
and domestic animals.
(AP, 7/26/05)
2005 Jul 30, The death toll in
China from a mysterious pig-borne disease continued to rise, with
several more cities affected. Sichuan province in southwestern China
has launched a campaign to educate poor, illiterate farmers not to
slaughter sick pigs or eat their meat after an outbreak of swine flu
hit about 100 villages and killed at least 34 people.
(Reuters, AFP, 7/30/05)
2005 Jul 30, A Russia newspaper
reported that a strain of bird flu harmful to humans has been found
in an outbreak of the disease in Siberia.
(AP, 7/30/05)
2005 Nov 15, Data was published
indicating that Mosquitrix by GlaxoSmithKline of Belgium, an
experimental vaccine against malaria given to children in Mozambique
in 2003, cut clinical cases by 35%.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.85)
2005 Nov 19, It was reported
that the Nipah virus, naturally found in bats, had moved to
Malaysian pigs. It killed about 40% of the 265 people it had
infected.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.85)
2005 The vaccine Menactra, to
prevent meningococcal meningitis, was licensed in the US. It was
manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, a unit of Sanofi-Aventis.
(WSJ, 8/4/08, p.D1)
2005 There was a measles
outbreak among school children in Indiana. In 2006 the CDC
attributed it to home-schooled children whose parents avoided
vaccinations out of safety concern. The outbreak was later traced to
a 17-year-old girl who had traveled to Romania without getting
vaccinated.
(WSJ, 8/3/06, p.A1)(SFC, 12/22/06, p.A18)
2006 May 12, US Federal
authorities said the number of confirmed cases of a rare fungal eye
infection that can cause blindness has climbed to 122, most of them
contact-lens wearers who reported using Bausch & Lomb Inc.'s
newest lens cleaner. In Oct, 2007, Bausch & Lomb was acquired by
private equity firm Warburg Pincus for $3.67 billion. Chief
Executive Ronald Zarrella said the deal would allow the company "to
pursue the growth path we were on ... without a lot of outside
distraction." Zarrella retired in 2008. As of 2009 away from the
glare of public scrutiny, the optical products company quietly
settled nearly 600 fungal-infection lawsuits with dozens more
individual claims yet to be resolved. The cost so far: Upward of
$250 million.
(AP, 5/12/06)(AP, 6/1/09)
2006 May 25, Researchers
confirmed that the human AIDS virus originated in a corner of
Cameroon in wild chimpanzees. The first known human to be infected
with HIV was a man from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo
in 1959.
(SFC, 5/26/06, p.A2)(WSJ, 5/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 7, Medical experts
said a killer strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis has been found
in at least 28 hospitals across South Africa and that it jeopardized
efforts to deal with AIDS.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 14, The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $68.2 million to fight parasitic
diseases that included leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis and hookworm.
The new money will support efficacy trials in India and Africa.
(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.A11)
2006 Sep 14, US federal health
officials said an outbreak a deadly strain of E. coli (0157:H7) had
left at least one person dead in Wisconsin over 100 others sick and
warned consumers not to eat bagged fresh spinach. The outbreak in 8
states soon extended to 25. 2 more deaths were suspected and the
number sickened rose to 173. Most of the spinach crop at this time
of the year comes from California. A special effort was under way in
the Salinas Valley of California, a major leafy-vegetable growing
region, to look for any possible source of contamination there. The
outbreak was traced to California’s Natural Selection Foods, which
recalled all suspect products. This was the same deadly strain that
in 1982 had sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan who
ate McDonald’s burgers. A surveillance system setup after a 1993
outbreak at the Jack-in-the-Box fast food chain helped single out
spinach as the likely source of this outbreak.
(AP, 9/14/06)(WSJ, 9/18/06, p.A1)(SFC, 9/23/06,
p.A9)(WSJ, 9/25/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 28, The US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention warned that travelers to parts of
Africa and Asia are returning with a new mosquito-borne virus. Some
people returning to Europe, the US, Canada, Martinique and French
Guyana reported cases of Chikungunya fever (CHIKV). The virus first
emerged in Tanzania in 1953.
(Reuters 9/28/06)
2006 Oct 31, Scientists
reported that the Fujian-strain of H5N1 avian influenza has become
dominant in southern China.
(SFC, 10/31/06, p.A2)
2006 Nov 21, The UN said an
estimated 4.3 million people were infected with HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS, in the last 12 months. The UNAIDS report estimated that
the total number of people infected with HIV stood between 34-47
million.
(http://tinyurl.com/tajka)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.84)
2006 Dec 7, Researchers said
the Ebola virus may have killed more than 5,000 gorillas in West
Africa (Congo-Gabon), enough to send them into extinction if people
continue to hunt them.
(Reuters, 12/7/06)
2006 Dec 16, Indian health
officials said nearly 30 children have died this month of
mosquito-borne encephalitis in northern India, taking the toll since
July to 401.
(AP, 12/16/06)
2006 Dec 27, A 26-year-old
Egyptian man died of bird flu, the third member of his extended
family to die of the virus.
(AP, 12/27/06)
2006 In California an epidemic
of valley fever, clinically known as coccidioidomycosis, resulted in
over 5,500 cases and 33 deaths. The cases included 514 among inmates
at Pleasant Valley State Prison. The disease was endemic in the
southwest US and was triggered by spores rising from disturbed soil.
(SFC, 12/29/07, p.A3)
2006 The WHO estimated that
malaria infected up to 500 million people per year. Malaria killed
nearly one million people worldwide this year with children under
five and African countries bearing the brunt, according to a 2008
WHO report. Later in 2008 WHO halved its estimate of world-wide
malaria cases to 247 million.
(Econ, 2/4/06, p.71)(AFP, 9/18/08)(WSJ, 9/19/08,
p.A1)
2006 Dr. Jiao Nianzhi of
China’s Xiamen Univ. developed a technique called time series
observation based infra red epifluorescence microscopy (TIREM). He
used it accurately measure creatures in the ocean called aerobic
anoxygenic photoheterotrophic bacteria (AAPB). Results showed that
these organisms constitute 7% of the oceans’ microbes.
(Econ, 9/11/10, p.96)
2007 Jan 7, A senior Kenyan
health official said about 75 people have died of Rift Valley fever
(hemorrhagic fever) during the past three weeks and another 183 are
infected with it. The last outbreak of the disease in East Africa
was between 1997-1998, when 478 people died in Somalia and Kenya.
Currently there was no human vaccine.
(AP, 1/8/07)(WSJ, 1/9/06, p.A1)
2007 Feb 15, Government
scientists struggled to pinpoint the source of the first US
salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter. Nearly 300 people in 39
states have fallen ill since August, and federal health
investigators said they strongly suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and
certain batches of Wal-Mart's Great Value house brand, both
manufactured by ConAgra Foods.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2007 Feb 15, Nadia Abdel Hafez,
an Egyptian woman (37), died of bird flu in a Cairo hospital and a
boy, 5, became the 22nd Egyptian to test positive for the deadly
disease.
(Reuters, 2/16/07)
2007 Apr 7, It was reported
that injections of Mycobacterium vaccae into mice caused their
immune systems to produce serotonin. This neurotransmitter, when low
in humans, was known to be related to depression.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.79)
2007 Apr 25, UCSF biochemist
Joe DeRisi said he found genes of the single-celled, spore producing
parasite Nosema ceranae in dead bees. Researchers in Spain had
recently shown that the parasite is capable of wiping out a beehive.
(SFC, 4/26/07, p.A1)
2007 May 7, Hong Kong
newspapers reported that an unidentified animal illness has spread
in two southern Chinese cities, infecting at least 1,300 pigs and
killing more than 300. The diseased pigs began dying in Gaoyao and
Yunfu in Guangdong province following Chinese New Year celebrations
in February. The illness, which killed at least 300 pigs, was soon
identified as a strain of blue ear disease. Blue ear disease, also
called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, was first
identified in the United States in 1987.
(AP, 5/8/07)(SFC, 5/8/07, p.A17)(AP, 5/10/07)
2007 May 29, Andrew Speaker
(31), a lawyer from Atlanta with a rare and dangerous form of
tuberculosis, ignored doctors' advice and took two trans-Atlantic
flights, leading to the first US government-ordered quarantine since
1963. Italian officials said they were tracing the movements of
Speaker, who honeymooned in Rome for two days despite being told to
turn himself in to health authorities.
(AP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)(Reuters, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 7, It was reported
that UCSF researchers had identified a new species of bacteria,
Bartonella rochalimae, in an American tourist who was sickened after
spending 3 weeks trekking in Peru. It was named after Henrique da
Rocha-Lima, a Brazilian scientist who decades ago identified the
bacterium that causes typhus.
(SFC, 6/7/07, p.B1)
2007 Jul 14, A miner (29) died
in western Uganda from the deadly Marburg virus, first discovered in
1967.
(Econ, 8/18/07, p.40)
2007 Jul 24, Jolee Mohr (36)
died in Chicago just weeks after beginning an experimental gene
therapy treatment from Targeted Genetics to ease the pain the
rheumatoid arthritis in her knee. Doctors later suspected an
infection of Histoplasma capsulatum.
(SSFC, 9/16/07, p.A21)(SFC, 9/18/07, p.A4)
2007 Aug 7, Scientists reported
that a widespread die-off of frogs, toads and salamanders is
primarily due to the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
Global climate change was believed to encourage the spread of the
fungus.
(SFC, 8/7/07, p.A4)
2007 Aug 7, The US FDA approved
a new drug to help patients with AIDS. Pfizer’s Selzentry is the
first anti-AIDS drug that blocks the CCR5 receptor, often used by
the HIV virus to enter white blood cells.
(SFC, 8/7/07, p.A4)
2007 Aug 16, It was reported
that a highly infectious swine virus, blue pork disease, had spread
to 25 of China’s 33 provinces, prompting pork shortages and an 85%
increase in pork prices over the last year.
(SFC, 8/16/07, p.A15)
2007 Aug 20, In China Jia
Youling, chief veterinary officer, said that the Porcine
Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), aka as blue-ear pig
disease, head been brought under control. He said 257,000 pigs in 26
provinces had been infected. 68,000 had died from the disease and
175,000 were destroyed.
(Econ, 8/25/07, p.41)
2007 Aug, In Italy over a
hundred people became ill in Castiglione di Cervia, near Ravenna,
with a disease that was later identified as chikungunya, a tropical
disease spread by the tiger mosquito. This was the first such
outbreak in modern Europe.
(SSFC, 12/23/07, p.A22)
2007 Sep 1, The World Health
Organization (WHO) confirmed five human bird flu cases in Vietnam,
four of them fatal. The four, including two women, died between June
21 and August 3 while a fifth person, a 29-year-old man, had
recovered.
(Reuters, 9/1/07)
2007 Sep 6, Scientists reported
that the Israeli acute paralysis virus, first identified in the
Middle East in 2004, is associated with the Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD), which was wreaking havoc on commercial bees in the US.
(SFC, 9/7/07, p.A8)(Econ, 9/8/07, p.83)
2007 Sep 14, In Martinique
health officials declared a dengue epidemic following the report of
over 1,000 suspected cases in the last month.
(SFC, 9/17/07, p.A3)
2007 Sep 18, It was reported
that cranberry juice combats a wide range of bacteria, including
those that cause stomach ulcers, gum disease and food-borne
illnesses as well as urinary tract infections. Recent research
suggested that astringent compounds, called proanthocyanidins, in
the berry may work to prevent infection-causing bacteria from
adhering to cells in the urinary tract.
(WSJ, 9/18/07, p.D6)
2007 Sep 25, The World Health
Organization said 8 more cases of Ebola have been identified in
Congo, raising to 17 the number of people confirmed to have
contracted the deadly illness.
(AP, 9/25/07)
2007 Sep 28, Britain’s deputy
chief veterinarian said bluetongue disease is circulating in Britain
after being reported in a cow at the weekend in southern England.
(AP, 9/28/07)
2007 Sep 28, Japan suspended
poultry imports from Canada after the H7N3 strain of avian influenza
was found on a Saskatchewan chicken farm.
(Reuters, 9/28/07)
2007 Sep 29, The Topps Meat Co.
expanded its recall of frozen hamburger patties to include 21.7
million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli
bacteria that sickened more than a dozen people in eight US states.
(AP, 9/30/07)
2007 Sep 30, So far this year,
according to the Pan American Health Organization, 630,356 dengue
cases have been reported in the Americas, most in Brazil, Venezuela,
or Colombia, with 12,147 cases of hemorrhagic fever and 183 deaths.
The Dominican Republic has reported 25 deaths, while Puerto Rico
claimed 5,592 suspected cases and three deaths.
(AP, 9/30/07)\
2007 Oct 11, A World Health
Organization official said 69 children in northern Nigeria
contracted polio following vaccination against the disease. Peter
Eriki indicated that around 10 percent of the Nigerian population
has dodged the vaccination campaign.
(AFP, 10/12/07)
2007 Nov 13, Britain’s
government said an outbreak of bird flu in eastern England is the
deadly H5N1 strain of the disease. A two-mile protection zone and a
six-mile surveillance zone were created around the infected farm in
Suffolk.
(AP, 11/13/07)
2007 Nov 20, Researchers said
they have decoded the gene map of a strain of extensively
drug-resistant tuberculosis and that their work has identified
mutations that may help develop better treatments.
(AP, 11/21/07)
2007 Nov 29, In Uganda a senior
Ministry of Health official said an Ebola outbreak has killed at
least 16 people out of 51 confirmed cases. The first case was
reported Nov. 10 in Bundibugyo district, 210 miles west of the
capital, Kampala. Uganda last had an outbreak of Ebola in October
2000, when 173 people died. A new form of the Ebola virus was
detected in the outbreak. The death toll soon climbed to 21,
including 8 doctors and health workers.
(AP, 11/29/07)(AP, 11/30/07)(Reuters,
12/1/07)(SFC, 12/8/07, p.B6)
2007 Dec 7, The World Health
Organization confirmed that the father of a Chinese man who died of
bird flu has been infected with the virus that causes the disease,
saying it could not rule out the possibility of human-to-human
infection.
(AP, 12/7/07)
2007 Dec 15, Pakistan's Health
Ministry issuing a statement saying six people had initially tested
positive for the virus last month, while the WHO said eight had been
reported. International health experts were dispatched to Pakistan
to help investigate the cause of South Asia's first outbreak of bird
flu in people and determine if the virus could have been transmitted
through human contact.
(AP, 12/16/07)
2007 Dec 12-2007 Dec 14, In
South Africa 49 patients, all with multidrug resistant (MDR) and
extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB, escaped through holes they had
cut through the perimeter fences of Jose Pearson Hospital in Port
Elizabeth.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317354,00.html)
2008 Jan 2, Becton, Dickinson
and Co said it received clearance from the Food and Drug
Administration for a test to identify the presence of two deadly
healthcare-associated infections: Staphylococcus aureus and
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
(Reuters, 1/2/08)
2008 Jan 24, Researchers at the
J. Craig Venter Institute of Rockville, Md., reported that they have
built from scratch a synthetic chromosome containing all the genetic
material needed to produce the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, the
tiniest bacteria ever found.
(SFC, 1/25/08, p.A1)(Econ, 1/26/08, p.76)
2008 Jan 26, It was reported
that some 15,000 birds had died over the last month around Utah’s
Great Salt Lake due to avian cholera, caused by the bacterium
Pasteurella multocida. The disease was introduced into the wild
during the 1940s from US domestic poultry.
(SFC, 1/26/08, p.B6)
2008 Feb 14, Brazil flew 50,000
doses of yellow fever vaccine to Paraguay following an outbreak
there, the first in 34 years.
(SFC, 2/15/08, p.A4)
2008 Feb 23, It was reported
that Dr. Nathan Wolfe, a virologist at UCLA, was pushing for the
creation of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, a planet-wide
network to forecast epidemics before they happen.
(Econ, 2/23/08, p.97)
2008 Feb 27, The WHO confirmed
the first urban cases of yellow fever in Latin America in 60 years.
(WSJ, 2/28/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 11, The US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said 26% of US teen girls are
infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease. The rate
was highest among blacks.
(AP, 3/11/08)(WSJ, 3/12/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 20, Brazilian
officials said an outbreak of dengue in Rio de Janeiro state has
killed at least 47 people this year.
(SFC, 3/21/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 24, The WHO said polio
transmission has been stopped in Somalia.
(WSJ, 3/25/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 28, South Africa
launched a four million dollar program to track down tuberculosis
patients who have defaulted treatment, leading to resistant strains
of the illness.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Apr 4, A South Korean
official said quarantine workers have destroyed more than 100,000
chickens following the first outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu
in the country in more than a year.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 May 4, China's Health
Ministry issued a nationwide alert after the enterovirus 71 virus,
or EV-71, which causes hand, foot and mouth disease, infected more
than 4,500 children in central Anhui province. The outbreak was
centered around Fuyang city, where 22 deaths have occurred.
(AP, 5/4/08)
2008 May 5, In China, state
media said a deadly viral outbreak that preys on children has
appeared in Beijing, and the number of infections in China has grown
to more than 8,000. Enterovirus 71 was blamed and went on to kill at
least 43 people with over 24,000 sickened.
(AP, 5/5/08)(SFC, 5/24/08, p.A8)
2008 May 7, China’s state media
said the number of infections of hand, foot and mouth disease has
grown to more than 15,000 with 28 deaths.
(AP, 5/5/08)
2008 May 22, Bangladesh
reported its first confirmed case of human bird flu, but said the
16-month-old victim had now recovered from the virus.
(AFP, 5/22/08)
2008 Jun 3, The Good Friends, a
Seoul-based humanitarian group, said that a highly contagious
disease has sparked a health alert with an estimated five or six
children dying every day since April 27 in North Korea’s city of
Hoeryong. A doctor said hand-foot-mouth disease could be spreading
from China, where it has killed several dozen children.
(AFP, 6/3/08)
2008 Jun 7, In Hong Kong a
routine inspection found chickens infected with H5N1 bird flu in a
poultry market. Authorities slaughtered 2,700 birds and banned live
poultry imports from China.
(WSJ, 6/9/08, p.A12)
2008 Jun 11, Hong Kong
officials found bird-flu virus at three more food markets and
ordered the slaughter of some 3,500 birds at retail outlets.
(WSJ, 6/12/08, p.A13)
2008 Jun 12, US health
officials said there were some 228 reported cases in 23 states of
people falling ill from salmonella-tainted tomatoes. The 1st patient
had become sick on April 10.
(WSJ, 6/12/08, p.A1)(SFC, 6/13/08, p.A2)(WSJ,
7/10/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 18, US food safety
officials said 383 people in 30 states have fallen ill in a
Salmonella outbreak linked to certain types of tomatoes.
(Reuters, 6/19/08)
2008 Jun 20, The widening
Salmonella outbreak sickened more than 550 people. US food safety
inspectors planned trips to Florida and Mexico this weekend to
examine tomato farms and distribution chains, hoping to pinpoint the
source of the outbreak.
(Reuters, 6/20/08)
2008 Jun 26, US government
officials confirmed 756 illnesses from salmonella tainted tomatoes.
(SFC, 6/27/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 27, The US CDC said at
least 810 Americans have been sickened by the strain Salmonella
Saintpaul in tomatoes. The source of the tomatoes was made difficult
due to the process of repacking tomatoes at distribution centers. As
the number sickened reached nearly 1000 CDC officials began to look
at other possibilities for the outbreak, including cilantro and
jalapeno and Serrano peppers.
(SFC, 6/28/08, p.B1)(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.A1)
2008 Jun 27, Settlement
documents were filed for Steven Hatfill, a former Fort Detrick, Md.,
Army scientist. He had been named in 2002 as a person of interest in
the 2001 anthrax attacks. He will receive $5.8 million to settle his
lawsuit against the Justice Department. Hatfill claimed the Justice
Department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters
about the case.
(AP, 6/28/08)(SFC, 6/28/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 29, US researchers
reported that a drug called lodamin, developed using nanotechnology
and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment, may be broadly
effective against a range of cancers.
(Reuters, 6/30/08)
2008 Jul 11, In the Netherlands
health authorities announced a Dutch woman, infected during a
holiday to Uganda by the contagious Marburg virus, had died
overnight. The Marburg virus is similar to Ebola and causes heavy
bleeding. About 100 people who may have had contact with the woman
were under surveillance.
(AFP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 17, The US government
lifted a salmonella warning on tomatoes, but still warned caution on
fresh jalapeno and serrano peppers.
(SFC, 7/18/08, p.A6)
2008 Jul 29, US Army scientist
Bruce E. Ivins died of an apparent overdoes of Tylenol at Frederick
Memorial Hospital in Maryland. Federal prosecutors investigating the
2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death
penalty against Ivins in connection with anthrax mailings that
killed five people. Ivins, who was developing a vaccine against the
deadly toxin, committed suicide. On Feb 19, 2010, the FBI formally
closed his case concluding that Ivins acted alone in the 2001
anthrax mailings.
(AP, 8/1/08)(AP, 2/20/10)(SFC, 2/16/11, p.A6)
2008 Aug 2, The US Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) said that due to new tracking methods 40% more
people are infected by the HIV virus than was previosly believed.
(SSFC, 8/3/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 9, Morocco said it
would start vaccinating all livestock after the outbreak of Peste
des Petits Ruminants, a deadly viral disease, ahead of the Eid
festival when millions of animals are sacrificed.
(AFP, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 9, Togo’s Health
Ministry said an outbreak of bird flu has been confirmed for the
first time since last year.
(AP, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 11, Zimbabwe's health
minister said a cholera outbreak in a Harare suburb has killed at
least 11 people.
(AP, 9/11/08)
2008 Sep 13, The Albert and
Mary Lasker Foundation announced Stanley Falkow (74), Stanford
microbiologist, was the winner of a $300,000 Lasker award for
Special Achievement in medical Science. His work helped to explain
how pathogens cause human diseases.
(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.B2)
2008 Sep 25, Iraq's Health
Ministry reported that a total of 327 cholera cases had been
confirmed in central and southern Iraq since an outbreak of the
disease last month.
(AP, 9/25/08)
2008 Sep, In China hepatitis C
infections were discovered after a patient who had received a
transfusion during an operation in Pingtang tested positive for the
disease. In 2009 police detained the director of the hospital, where
at least 64 people were infected with the potentially deadly liver
disease after receiving transfusions from blood collected illegally.
(AP, 4/2/09)
2008 Oct 1, Berhe
Gebreegziabher, the head of Ethiopia’s animal health in the
agriculture ministry, said an outbreak of African horse sickness has
killed more than 2,000 horses, mules and donkeys in Ethiopia since
March.
(AFP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 7, Zambia's ambassador
said Zambia and the World Health Organization (WHO) have joined the
hunt for a mystery illness that has killed four people in South
Africa. A South Africa, health official said the mystery disease may
be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
(AFP, 10/7/08)(Reuters, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 14, Chinese state
media reported that a ginseng injection contaminated by bacteria
caused the deaths of three people using the medicine to treat
thrombosis and heart disease.
(AP, 10/15/08)
2008 Nov 5, In Mozambique a
medical officer said at least 50 people have died of cholera and
more than 100 have been taken to hospital since the disease broke
out last week in northern Manica province.
(AFP, 11/5/08)
2008 Nov 9, Doctors struggled
to contain an outbreak of cholera in a sprawling refugee camp near
Congo's eastern provincial capital of Goma, as new fighting ignited
fears that infected patients could scatter and launch an epidemic.
(AP, 11/9/08)
2008 Nov 12, Indonesian health
officials said test results from two laboratories in the capital
came back positive confirming that a girl (15) died of bird flu last
week.
(AP, 11/12/08)
2008 Nov 19, Philippine health
officials said at least two people have died and more than 1,500 are
in hospital following a suspected outbreak of cholera in the
southern Philippines.
(AFP, 11/19/08)
2008 Nov 20, The US ambassador
to Harare, James McGee, said that a total of 294 people have been
confirmed dead from cholera in Zimbabwe, amid some 1,200 cases of
the water-borne disease.
(AFP, 11/20/08)
2008 Nov 28, Zimbabwe’s
opposition said it has agreed on a draft constitutional amendment to
allow the formation of a power-sharing government, but obstacles
still remain to setting it up. The UN warned that cholera has killed
389 people in Zimbabwe to date and that the disease is also
spreading into neighbouring Botswana and South Africa.
(AFP, 11/28/08)(Reuters, 11/28/08)
2008 Nov 30, Zimbabwe's health
minister insisted that the country's crumbling medical system was
taking all necessary measures to combat a cholera epidemic, even as
more than 1,000 new cases were reported.
(AP, 11/30/08)
2008 Dec 2, Zimbabwe slipped
deeper into crisis as the death toll from a cholera epidemic neared
500 and members of President Robert Mugabe's armed forces were
accused of taking part in a looting spree.
(AP, 12/2/08)
2008 Dec 9, Hong Kong health
authorities said more than 80,000 chickens will be slaughtered after
bird flu was found on a poultry farm, the first outbreak at a farm
here in nearly six years.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 11, Hong Kong's
government confirmed that the deadly H5N1 virus was found at a
poultry farm, the first outbreak on a farm here in nearly six years.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, President Robert
Mugabe declared that Zimbabwe's cholera crisis was over, even as the
UN raised the death toll from the epidemic to 783.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 16, Chinese
agricultural officials ordered the slaughter of some 377,000
chickens after finding the H5N1 bird flu virus in two areas of
Jiangsu province.
(WSJ, 12/17/08, p.A14)
2008 Dec 23, Bangladeshi
authorities said a new outbreak of bird flu had been detected at a
village in the north of the country as they struggled to contain the
disease.
(AP, 12/23/08)
2008 Dec 30, Congo’s health
minister said An Ebola virus outbreak has killed 11 people in
western Congo. Caritas, a Catholic charity, reported that over 400
people have been killed in northeaster Congo since Christmas day.
(AP, 12/30/08)(SFC, 12/31/08, p.A3)
2009 Jan 5, A Chinese woman
(19) died from bird flu in a Beijing hospital, but the World Health
Organization said the case did not appear to signal a new public
health threat.
(AP, 1/6/09)
2009 Jan 6, The WHO said at
least 1,732 people have died in Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic and the
number of cases diagnosed has risen to 34,306.
(AP, 1/6/09)
2009 Jan 7, US health officials
said an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning has made 388 people
sick across 42 states, sending 18 percent of them to the hospital.
(Reuters, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 12, Minnesota
officials said lab tests had confirmed salmonella bacteria in a five
pound container of King Nut brand peanut butter. King Nut of Solon,
Ohio, had recalled the product on January 10. At least 6 people had
been killed and over 470 sickened nationwide in 43 states.
(WSJ, 1/13/09, p.A2)(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A12)
2009 Jan 13, The WHO said
Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and
almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease in
Africa's worst outbreak in nearly a decade.
(Reuters, 1/13/09)
2009 Jan 14, South Africa’s
health ministry said the death toll from a cholera outbreak has
risen to 15, with more than 2,100 cases registered in a spillover
from Zimbabwe's epidemic. The UN said the death toll from Zimbabwe's
cholera outbreak has risen to 2,106.
(AP, 1/14/09)
2009 Jan 16, Kellogg Co. of
Battle Creek, Mich., recalled 16 products containing peanut butter
due to possible salmonella contamination as federal officials
confirmed contamination at a Georgia facility that ships peanut
products to 85 food companies. On Jan 21 federal health authorities
confirmed that peanut butter and paste made by a Virginia company
were the sole sources of the outbreak. The Blakely, Ga., facility
was owned by Peanut Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va.
(SFC, 1/17/09, p.A2)(WSJ, 1/22/09, p.A4)
2009 Jan 20, In central China a
16-year-old boy infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus died, the
country's third fatality from the disease this month.
(AP, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 21, Indonesia’s Health
Ministry said 2 people have died of bird flu, apparently after
contact with sick chickens, raising the country's death toll to 115.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 24, Mariana Bridi
(20), Brazilian model, died from complications related to a
generalized infection caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
The bacteria is known to be resistant to multiple kinds of
antibiotics. The infection reduced the flow of oxygen to her limbs,
causing her feet to be amputated last week and her hands this week.
(AP, 1/24/09)
2009 Jan 24, China announced
the death of a 31-year-old woman from bird flu, its fourth human
victim this year, sparking fears of an outbreak during the country's
main festive season.
(AFP, 1/24/09)
2009 Jan 26, China’s state
media reported that an 18-year-old man has died from bird flu in
southern China, the fifth human death from the virus in the country
this year.
(AP, 1/26/09)
2009 Jan 28, Peanut Corp.
expanded its recall to all peanut products produced at its Blakely,
Ga., plant since Jan 1, 2007, due to a salmonella outbreak.
(SFC, 1/29/09, p.A3)
2009 Feb 25, Kenya announced
its first polio infection in 20 years, after a 4-year-old girl was
diagnosed with the disease along the country's remote border with
Sudan.
(AP, 2/25/09)
2009 Feb 27, The UN Children's
Fund said 53 million children are being targeted by a mass
immunization drive against polio in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory
Coast, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Some 844 polio cases were
reported in the 8 countries in 2008, 95% of them in Nigeria.
(AFP, 2/27/09)
2009 Mar 3, An official said 4
Indonesians have died of bird flu over the last 2 months, bringing
the death toll in the country over the past several years to 119.
(AP, 3/3/09)
2009 Mar 5, In Zimbabwe PM
Morgan Tsvangirai said more than 4,000 people have died in the
cholera epidemic that has hit at least 85,000 people, warning the
figures were likely an underestimate.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2009 Mar 24, Cepheid, a
Sunnyvale, Ca., gene-based test developer, said it has devised a
rapid, sensitive diagnostic test for tuberculosis and will make it
available at reduced cost in developing countries. The new automated
test gives results in 2 hours.
(SFC, 3/25/09, p.C1)
2009 Mar 24, The WHO's annual
report on TB, presented in Rio, indicated that there were 1.37
million cases of people with both TB and HIV in 2007, the latest
year for which statistics are available. About 700,000 people were
infected with both in 2006.
(AP, 3/24/09)
2009 Mar 24, Indonesia's
controversial Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said she wants to
end vaccinating children against meningitis, mumps and some other
diseases because she fears foreign drug companies are using the
country as a testing ground.
(AP, 3/25/09)
2009 Mar 26, Chinese health
officials said that hand, foot and mouth disease has sickened 41,000
people across the country and killed 18 children so far this year.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 12, In Germany a
scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to
inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within 48 hours of the
accident, the at-risk scientist, a woman (45) whose identity has not
been revealed, was injected with an experimental vaccine from
Canada. After 2 weeks the woman appeared to be healthy. At the time
of the accident, she was wearing three layers of protective gloves,
and though the needle stuck her, the plunger of the syringe was not
pushed so it's not certain the virus entered her bloodstream.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 28, An Egyptian health
ministry spokesman said a two-year-old girl has contracted bird flu,
the 60th reported case since the first outbreak of the disease in
the country in 2006.
(AP, 3/28/09)
2009 Mar 30, Argentina’s health
minister acknowledged that the country was in the middle of a dengue
fever epidemic with nearly 8,000 people infected. Neighboring
Bolivia had about 51,000 cases reported, while Brazil counted some
40,000 cases.
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46371)(SSFC,
4/19/09, p.G3)
2009 Apr 7, In Texas Jon Dale
Jones (46), a former Army hospitcal nurse, pleaded guilty to assault
and theft. He was accused of infecting 15 patients with hepatitis C.
Jones was arrested on federal charges in March of 2008 for using
dirty needles to administer anesthesia, and accused of stealing
painkillers for himself.
(SFC, 4/8/09,
p.A5)(www.mahalo.com/Jon_Dale_Jones)
2009 Apr 8, The international
Red Cross said a polio outbreak, that now affects 15 African
countries, threatens efforts to eradicate the disease.
(AFP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 17, In Norway a $225
million fund to provide low-price anti-malaria medicine around the
world was launched in Oslo to fight a disease that kills 2,000
children a day.
(AP, 4/18/09)
2009 Apr 18, In Egypt the
state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported that an Egyptian woman has
contracted bird flu in the second case in the country in as many
days.
(AFP, 4/18/09)
2009 Apr 23, The US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention reported that 7 people have been
diagnosed with a new kind of swine flu in California and Texas.
(Reuters, 4/24/09)
2009 Apr 24, Mexico’s Health
Secretary Jose Cordova said private and public schools in Mexico
city have been ordered to remain closed due to a flue epidemic. At
least 20 people have died nationwide from the flu in the last three
weeks.
(AP, 4/24/09)
2009 Apr 24, In Egypt a woman
(33) died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the third death from the
disease in Egypt this week.
(AFP, 4/24/09)
2009 Apr 25, Mexico City
suspended all public events for 10 days as officials tried to
contain an outbreak of a deadly new swine flu. Tests showed 20
people have died of the swine flu, and 48 other deaths were probably
due to the same strain.
(AP, 4/25/09)
2009 Apr 25, The World Health
Organization called an emergency meeting of experts to consider
declaring an international public health emergency over the swine
flu outbreak believed to have killed dozens of people in Mexico and
sickened at least seven in the US.
(AP, 4/25/09)
2009 Apr 26, New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention has confirmed that students at a city high school
were infected with swine flu. About 100 students complained of
flu-like symptoms at the school. Some students went to Cancun on a
spring break trip two weeks ago. The flu has spread beyond Mexico's
borders with confirmed cases in the US and suspected cases as far
away as New Zealand.
(AP, 4/26/09)
2009 Apr 26, Canada reported
its first confirmed cases of swine flu at opposite ends of the
country, with two cases in the western province of British Columbia
and four in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.
(Reuters, 4/26/09)
2009 Apr 27, US cases of the
deadly new flu strain rose to 40. Governments around the world acted
to stem a possible flu pandemic, as a virus that has killed 149
people in Mexico and spread to North America was confirmed to have
reached Europe. Spain's Health Ministry confirmed the country's
first case of swine flu and said another 20 people are suspected of
having the disease.
(Reuters, 4/27/09)(AP, 4/27/09)(WSJ, 4/28/09,
p.A1)
2009 Apr 28, World health
officials raised a global alert to an unprecedented level as swine
flu was blamed for more deaths in Mexico and the epidemic crossed
new borders, with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and
the Asia-Pacific regions.
(AP, 4/28/09)
2009 Apr 29, The WHO raised its
alert for swine flu from level 4 to level 5, its 2nd highest alert
level. Austria and Germany confirmed cases of swine flu, becoming
the third and fourth European countries hit by the disease. US
health officials reported that a 23-month-old child in Texas has
died from the disease. The World Health Organization called an
emergency meeting to consider its pandemic alert level.
(AP, 4/29/09)(SFC, 4/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Apr 30, The Iraqi
government decided to kill three wild boars at the Baghdad Zoo amid
worldwide fears of swine flu. No date was set for their killing. Two
US Marines and a sailor were killed during combat operations in
Anbar province.
(AP, 5/1/09)(SFC, 5/2/09, p.A2)
2009 Apr 30, Mexican health
authorities said they confirmed 300 swine flu cases and 12 deaths
due to the virus among a total of 679 people tested so far.
(AP, 5/1/09)
2009 May 1, US cases of the
H1N1 flu rose to 155, based on federal and state tallies. State
laboratory operators believe the number is higher because they are
not testing all suspected cases. Mexico raised its confirmed swine
flu death toll from 15 to 16, adding that the total number of
confirmed cases of the virus had risen to 397. Worldwide, the total
confirmed cases were 653, with the real number also believed to be
much larger.
(AP, 5/2/09)
2009 May 2, Canadian health
officials said a traveler has carried the new H1N1 virus from Mexico
to Canada, infecting his family and a herd of swine.
(Reuters, 5/2/09)
2009 May 2, India's biggest
drug maker Ranbaxy announced the recall of an antibiotic, on sale in
the US, because of manufacturing problems, marking a new setback for
the company. The Japanese-controlled company said it was voluntarily
recalling all lots of nitrofurantoin capsules, an antibiotic used in
the treatment of urinary tract infections.
(AFP, 5/2/09)
2009 May 2, Mexico said it had
no confirmed deaths from HINI swine flu overnight, even as its
confirmed caseload grew to 443.
(AP, 5/2/09)
2009 May 3, Swine flu extended
its reach through Europe and Latin America, with at least five
countries reporting new cases. Health experts were investigating a
case of the virus jumping from a person to pigs, trying to determine
if the disease was reaching a new stage.
(AP, 5/3/09)
2009 May 3, Egyptian police
fired tear gas and clashed with irate pig farmers, leaving 12 people
injured as owners resisted the government's attempt to slaughter all
the nation's pigs to guard against swine flu.
(AP, 5/3/09)
2009 May 4, Mexico's health
secretary said most businesses will reopen May 6 nationwide, citing
ebb in the swine flu outbreak. The World Health Organization chief
warned that swine flu could return with a vengeance despite Pres.
Felipe Calderon insisting his country has contained the epidemic.
(AP, 5/4/09)(AFP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 6, New H1N1 flu cases
across Europe and a second US death kept health officials on alert
despite signs Mexico's epidemic had passed its peak. Mexican health
officials said that testing of backlogged cases has increased the
confirmed swine flu death toll from 31 to 42, including three new
deaths in the past two days.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 7, Argentina and
Brazil confirmed five swine flu cases within their borders as the
virus affects more nations in South America.
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 May 7, In Mexico high
schools and universities closed by the swine flu epidemic reopened
as teachers and parents carefully checked returning students for flu
symptoms. The death toll due to the HINI flu was raised to 44.
Mexico City says all businesses can reopen including sports arenas,
museums, bars.
(AP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 8, In Canada a
provincial medical official said a woman from Alberta has died from
the H1N1 flu virus, making her the first Canadian to die from the
virus.
(Reuters, 5/8/09)
2009 May 9, Australia and Japan
joined the ranks of affected countries with confirmed H1N1 swine
flu. New Zealand, the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to
confirm cases, reported two more for a total of seven.
(AP, 5/9/09)
2009 May 9, Costa Rica reported
the first swine flu death outside North America and the US announced
its third death from the virus, while Mexico delayed the reopening
of primary schools in some states.
(AP, 5/9/09)
2009 May 14, The World Health
Organization (WHO) said the number of confirmed cases of the new
Influenza A (H1N1) flu has climbed to 6,497, including 65 deaths.
(Reuters, 5/14/09)
2009 May 15, In Egypt a
three-year-old boy from north Egypt tested positive for the deadly
H5N1 strain of bird flu in the second such case in two days. This
brought to 71 the number of bird flu infections in Egypt.
(AFP, 5/16/09)
2009 May 16, Japan said 8 high
school students had tested positive for swine flu amid fears the
virus was spreading in at least two cities where scores of students
said they felt ill.
(AP, 5/16/09)
2009 May 17, In NYC Mitchell
Wiener, an assistant principal at a middle school, became the first
death linked to the H1N1 flu virus.
(SFC, 5/18/09, p.A3)
2009 May 17, Chile confirmed
its first two cases of swine flu in two women who arrived from the
Dominican Republic.
(AP, 5/17/09)
2009 May 18, In Japan health
officials said a wave of new confirmations sent the number of H1N1
flu cases soaring to more than 120, prompting the government to
order the closure of schools and the cancellation of community
events.
(AP, 5/17/09)
2009 May 18, In Egypt a
4-year-old girl died of bird flu, making her the country's 27th
death from the virus since 2006.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 19, Inmates at a
Mexico City prison rioted over restrictions on visits due to swine
flu, as the country reported two more confirmed deaths, raising the
toll to 74 nationwide.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 21, Japan’s PM Taro
Aso again urged the public to stay calm as a total of 292 swine flu
cases were reported, including the third in greater Tokyo, the
world's largest urban area.
(AFP, 5/21/09)
2009 May 23, It was reported
that millions of bats in at least 7 US states (Connecticut, New
York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and West
Virginia) have died from white-nose syndrome, a fungal diseases. In
2011 the fungus Geomyces destructans was identified as the cause.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.36)(SFC, 10/28/11, p.A18)
2009 May 26, The Red Cross said
the number of cholera cases in Zimbabwe is expected to cross the
100,000 mark in the coming days, warning that the epidemic was
Africa's worst in 15 years.
(AFP, 5/26/09)
2009 May 28, It was reported
that scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that
causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus. The so-called "Lujo"
virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall.
Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a
medicine recommended by the scientists.
(AP, 5/28/09)
2009 May 23, Chikungunya, a
mosquito-born virus endemic to propical Africa and Asia, was
reported to have arrived in Albania and Italy.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.83)
2009 Jun 1, Chilean plumber,
Fernando Vera, died of swine flu, making him South America's first
swine-flu death.
(AP, 6/2/09)
2009 Jun 6, It was reported
that in South Africa HIV-AIDS continued to claim some 3,000 lives a
week.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.48)
2009 Jun 9, South African
health activist Thembi Ngubane (24) died of tuberculosis leaving
behind a daughter (4). Her radio diaries of her struggle against the
AIDS virus won her audiences and admiration around the world.
Ngubane was 19 when she was given a tape recorder to make an audio
diary about living with HIV in a country where nearly one third of
young women are infected with the virus.
(AP, 6/12/09)
2009 Jun 11, The World Health
Organization held an emergency swine flu meeting and declared the
first flu pandemic in 41 years as infections climbed in the United
States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.
(AP, 6/11/09)
2009 Jun 12, Swiss
pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said it has successfully
produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of
expectations.
(AP, 6/12/09)
2009 Jun 14, Thai PM Abhisit
Vejjajiva urged the country not to panic about swine flu, after the
number of cases grew nine-fold in four days and a cluster emerged in
a key tourist hub. Health authorities reported that confirmed cases
of the A(H1N1) virus soared to 150, compared with just 16 on June
10, including a number of foreigners.
(AFP, 6/14/09)
2009 Jun 17, The number of
Nebraska cattle herds quarantined because of bovine tuberculosis
concerns jumped to 42 and Colorado and South Dakota were warned the
disease may have already spread there.
(AP, 6/17/09)
2009 Jun 20, It was reported
that that the H1N1 swine flu virus has spread to at least 76
countries and caused over 160 deaths, and that Brazilian researchers
have identified a new strain of the virus.
(SFC, 6/20/09, p.D12)
2009 Jun 28, The US Agriculture
Department said a Colorado meat company is expanding a recall of
beef due to possible contamination by E.coli O157:H7 bacteria after
an investigation found 18 illnesses may be linked to the meat.
(Reuters, 6/28/09)
2009 Jun 30, Authorities in
Argentina's capital and Buenos Aires province declared health
emergencies and extended school vacations as the nation's swine flu
death toll surged to 35.
(AP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jul 5, It was reported
that Libya suffering an outbreak of bubonic plague and that
neighboring countries, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, were
acting to prevent its spread across the borders.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.M3)
2009 Jul 7, Canadian officials
said they had identified yet another new flu virus, this one a
mixture of human and swine influenzas, in two farm workers in
Western Canada.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 10, A US plant
scientists said late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of
the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home
gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic
farms.
(Reuters, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Millions of
Argentines stayed home from work, churches in Bolivia canceled Mass
and Ecuador announced its first fatalities from swine flu, as the
virus continued its spread during the South American winter season.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 12, Thailand's swine
flu death toll rose to 18 as the government confirmed three more
fatalities and opened a vaccine plant to prevent tens of thousands
of infections across the country.
(AFP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Australia
Adelaide-based Vaxine began swine flu vaccine trials with 300
subjects. Melbourne's CSL had 240 people in its seven-month trial,
which started Jul 22. The companies said their trials are the first
tests of a swine flu vaccine on humans.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, The WHO said
that deaths from the H1N1 swine flu virus have double in the
past 3 weeks to over 700.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 23, Arab health
ministers decided to ban children, the elderly and those with
chronic medical conditions from attending the annual Muslim
pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia this year in effort to slow the spread of
swine flu.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 30, Zimbabwe's health
minister said a cholera epidemic has ended, after more than 4,200
deaths and 100,000 cases since last August, but warned new outbreaks
remain a threat.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Aug 1, China’s Ziketan
town in Qinghai province was put under collective quarantine when
laboratory tests showed it had been struck by the highly virulent
disease. 2 of its residents had recently died from pneumonic plague,
which spreads through the air, making it easier to contract than
bubonic plague, which requires that a person is bitten by an
infected flea. Its fatality rate was up to 100% if left untreated,
compared with 60% for bubonic plague.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Indonesia
UNAIDS regional director Prasada Rao cited a new report saying more
than 1.5 million women living with HIV in Asia were infected by
their partners and 50 million more are at risk of infection. Rao
spoke on the sidelines of the ninth International Congress on AIDS
in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which is being held on the
Indonesian resort island of Bali.
(AFP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 21, Chile's health
ministry said it ordered a quarantine for two turkey farms outside
the port city of Valparaiso after genetic tests confirmed sick birds
were afflicted with the same swine flu virus circulating in humans.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Ecuador Lt. Col.
John Merino, President Rafael Correa's chief of security, died of
swine flu. Ecuador has reported 36 confirmed deaths from swine flu
as of last week, along with 1,382 infected.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 13, The Afghan health
ministry said it has so far recorded 673 cases of cholera
countrywide in almost a third of the country's 34 provinces,
including Kabul. No deaths have been reported. A British soldier was
killed in an attack on a foot patrol in Helmand province. A 2nd NATO
service member died in a bomb blast in the south.
(AFP, 9/13/09)(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 18, It was reported
that some 20-50 thousands birds have died along the shore of Utah’s
Great Salt Lake so far this year from avian botulism.
(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A21)
2009 Sep 18, Australia approved
a vaccine against swine flu and said it would start administering
the medicine this month to its most at-risk citizens, including
medical staff, pregnant women and the chronically ill. Regulators
approved CSL Ltd.'s vaccine for people above age 10, but the
Therapeutic Drug Administration was awaiting the results of more
clinical trials before approving it for younger children.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 23, The 20-member
African Leaders Malaria alliance began a campaign to stop malaria
from killing an estimated 1 million people in Africa each year.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Oct 1, A Nigerian official
said 9 people died and several others were hospitalized this week
following a cholera outbreak in northern Taraba State, bringing the
death toll in the region to 97 over the last few weeks.
(AFP, 10/2/09)
2009 Oct 8, Leaders of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti agreed to cooperate in a campaign aimed
at eradicating the last vestiges of malaria from the islands of the
Caribbean by 2020.
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 16, In northern
Nigeria the toll in a cholera outbreak rose to 149 with 52 more
deaths recorded. The disease was first reported on September 10 in
Gwoza local government on the border with Cameroon from where it
spread to six other districts.
(AFP, 10/16/09)
2009 Oct 22, In the Philippines
outbreaks of leptospirosis, spread by water contaminated with the
urine of rats, dogs and other animals, have compounded the problems
faced after back-to-back storms since late last month killed more
than 900 people. The WHO said it will send an emergency team to help
fight a bacterial disease outbreak that has killed at least 148
people and sickened nearly 2,000 in and around the flood-hit
capital.
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 23, The World Health
Organization said nearly 5,000 people have reportedly died from
swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global
epidemic.
(AP, 10/23/09)
2009 Oct 23, President Barack
Obama signed a declaration making the swine flu outbreak a national
emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move
emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected
patients.
(AP, 10/25/09)
2009 Oct, Researchers found
that a bug named xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus
(XMRV) occurred in 67% of patients suffering from chronic fatigue
syndrome (CFS). The bug had already been implicated in prostate
cancer, breast cancer and lymphoma.
(Econ, 1/9/10, p.80)
2009 Nov 4, The US Dept. of
Agriculture said pigs in a commercial herd in Indiana have tested
positive for swine flu, making it the first time the virus has been
found in such hogs.
(SFC, 11/5/09, p.A9)
2009 Nov 4, A Nigerian senior
health official said a fresh cholera outbreak has killed 20 people
and left 200 others infected in northern Adamawa State in the past
week.
(AFP, 11/4/09)
2009 Nov 4, The London-based
indigenous rights group Survival International said Swine flu has
appeared among the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela, one of the largest
isolated indigenous groups in the Amazon. A local doctor and that
the virus is suspected in seven deaths, including six infants.
(AP, 11/4/09)
2009 Nov 6, The aid agency
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) warned that
Southern Sudan is facing a "serious outbreak" of the deadly kala
azar tropical disease. Kala azar, or visceral leishmaniasis, is a
neglected tropical disease contracted by the bite of a sand fly,
endemic in some parts of southern Sudan. Without treatment, almost
all victims die within one to four months. If treatment is received
on time, some 95% can recover.
(AFP, 11/6/09)
2009 Nov 9, The Afghan Ministry
of Public Health said that 710 of the 779 cases of H1N1 reported
since early July have been among Afghan, US and Italian troops. The
11 people who have died from the virus were all Afghans, including
one soldier.
(AP, 11/9/09)
2009 Nov 21, Saudi health
officials announced the first deaths from swine flu of this year's
annual pilgrimage to Mecca, as four pilgrims succumbed to the
disease soon after arriving in Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 11/21/09)
2009 Nov 25, A Chinese health
official said eight cases of swine flu mutation have been detected
amid longstanding concerns among scientists that the virus could
change into a more dangerous form.
(AP, 11/25/09)
2009 Nov 29, Saudi officials
said 5 people died from swine flu during the hajj, a relatively
small number considering the event is the largest annual gathering
in the world and was seen as an ideal incubator for the virus.
(AP, 11/29/09)
2009 Nov 30, An Algerian health
organization (AnisS) warned that thousands of its people are
unknowingly infected with the AIDS virus and called for more testing
and prevention efforts.
(AFP, 12/1/09)
2009 Dec 1, In South Africa
Pres. Zuma said on World AIDS Day that all HIV-positive babies will
be treated and testing expanded, a dramatic and eagerly awaited
shift in a country that has more people living with HIV than any
other.
(AP, 12/1/09)
2009 Dec 4, Kenyan health
officials said a cholera epidemic was sweeping across the country
with 4,700 cases reported in the past month along with 119 deaths.
(SFC, 12/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 10, The US Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) reported that nearly 10,000 people have died
from H1N1 influenza through Nov 14. Over 200,000 people were
reported to have been hospitalized since the beginning of the
pandemic 7 months earlier. 50 million America were estimated to have
contacted the disease.
(SFC, 12/11/09, p.A21)
2009 Dec 14, The World Health
Organization (WHO) said polio has re-emerged in several African
countries where it had been eradicated, at the start of a conference
on child immunization in Zimbabwe.
(AP, 12/14/09)
2009 Dec 18, South Korean
trucks crossed into North Korea delivering enough doses of antiviral
drugs for 500,000 North Koreans. An estimated 50 people in North
Korea have died of swine flu since November. Han Su Chol, a North
Korean health minister, expressed thanks.
(SFC, 12/19/09, p.A4)
2009 Dec 14, Dr. Walter Stamm
(b.1945), a pioneer in the treatment of urinary tract infections,
died in Seattle. He demonstrated that many cases of PID are caused
by Chlamydia trachomatis and developed a test for the organism.
(SSFC, 12/27/09, p.C8)
2009 Chinese researchers
announced that they had reduced schistosomiasis infection rates in 2
villages near Poyang lake by replacing water buffaloes, a parasite
host, with tractors and improved sanitation. The parasitic worm
Schistosoma japonicum, carried by tiny snails, caused
schistosomiasis, which stood as the world’s 2nd most prevalent
disease.
(Econ, 6/20/09, p.43)
2009 In the Netherlands 6
people died this year from Q-fever. Some 2,300 had become infected
by Coxiella burnetti, the infectious bug responsible for the
disease. The bug is released into the air during birthing or
miscarriages by infected goats. 40,000 pregnant goats were slated to
be destroyedin early 2010.
(Econ, 1/9/10, p.52)
2010 Jan 18, US officials said
on some 390 tons of ground beef produced by a California meat
packer, some of it nearly two years ago, is being recalled for fear
of potentially deadly E. coli bacterium tainting.
(Reuters, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 28, US researchers
reported the development of a prototype vaccine that protects
monkeys and mice against the emerging chikungunya virus. The
mosquito-borne virus first appeared on Reunion Island in 2005 and
has spread to more than 18 countries.
(SFC, 1/29/10, p.A13)
2010 Jan 30, In the Marshall
Islands the government considered invoking special powers of
quarantine as an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis has been
declared a public health emergency.
(AP, 1/30/10)
2010 Feb 12, The WHO said a
cholera outbreak on Papua New Guinea has killed at least 40 people
over the last several months.
(SFC, 2/13/10, p.A2)
2010 Feb 25, Mozambique's
health minister, Leonardo Chavane, said 36 people have died this
year from a cholera outbreak in the northern and central parts of
the southern African country. he said the situation is worrying
because new cases are being reported daily and are complicated by
rumors that health staff are spreading cholera rather than fighting
it.
(AP, 2/25/10)
2010 Feb 26, Health officials
in Puerto Rico declared an epidemic of dengue fever. Health
Secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez says 210 cases have been confirmed for
January, more than triple the number in the same month of 2007.
(AP, 2/26/10)
2010 Mar 4, Brazil’s National
Health Surveillance Agency, Anvisa, ordered all 1,987 passengers and
765 crew to remain aboard the "Vision of the Seas" anchored at
Buzios, while teams of doctors treat the 195 passengers suffering
vomiting and diarrhea and determine the cause of their illness.
(AFP, 3/4/10)
2010 Mar 13, Mozambique's
health ministry spokesman said the country's cholera outbreak has
now killed 42 people in the northern and central parts of the
southern African country.
(AP, 3/13/10)
2010 Mar 19, Polish authorities
said a herd of some 300 bison in southeastern Poland is at risk from
tuberculosis after one recently died of the disease.
(AP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 22, US scientist Rita
Colwell (76) won the $150,000 Stockholm Water Prize for her research
on the prevention of cholera and other waterborne diseases.
(AP, 3/22/10)
2010 Apr 22, In Burkina Faso
Health Minister Seydou Bouda said a strain of meningitis, called X,
has killed 718 people out of 5,118 cases in the West African country
since January.
(AP, 4/23/10)
2010 Apr 22, The UN World
Health Organization and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) asked for funds
for vaccinations saying almost 200 children have died of measles in
16 African countries in the first three months of this year.
(AFP, 4/22/10)
2010 Jun 3, In Geneva WHO
Director-General Margaret Chan said swine flu is still a pandemic,
even though the most activity appears to have passed. Last week WHO
confirmed 18,114 deaths from swine flu worldwide since that start of
the outbreak in April, 2009.
(SFC, 6/4/10, p.A2)
2010 Jun 18, The UN said a
recent measles outbreak in eastern and southern Africa has killed
more than 700 people, threatening to reverse gains made over several
years to stem the disease.
(AP, 6/18/10)
2010 Jun 29, The government of
Mexico lifted the alert for swine flu, officially ending the health
emergency in the country where the illness first appeared 14 months
ago.
(AP, 6/29/10)
2010 Jul 8, US federal
researchers said that they have identified a pair of naturally
occurring antibodies that are able to kill more than 90% of all
strains of the AIDS virus.
(SFC, 7/8/10, p.A6)
2010 Jul 8, Dr. Thomas Peebles
(b.1921), measles researcher, died at his home in Port Charlotte,
Fla. His work in the 1950s enabled researchers to develop a vaccine
against measles.
(SFC, 8/6/10, p.C5)
2010 Jul 29, Ugandan officials
said an anthrax outbreak has killed 82 hippos in the last month and
a half.
(AP, 7/29/10)
2010 Aug 11, Researchers
reported that plastic surgery patients have carried a new class of
superbugs resistant to almost all antibiotics from South Asia to
Britain and they could spread worldwide. This so-called NDM-1 gene
was first identified last year by Cardiff University's Timothy Walsh
in two types of bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia
coli, in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.
(AFP, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 12, In Nigeria a
senior official said a cholera outbreak has killed 40 people while
115 others have been infected in northern Nigeria's Borno State in
the past week.
(AFP, 8/13/10)
2010 Aug 13, A Belgian man died
from a drug-resistant "superbug" originating in South Asia, the
first reported death from the bacteria. The superbug -- a bacterial
gene called New Delhi metallo-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) -- was first
identified last year in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in
India.
(AFP, 8/13/10)
2010 Aug 16, Nigerian officials
said a cholera outbreak has killed 87 people during the past month
while 1,315 others have been infected.
(AP, 8/16/10)
2010 Aug 19, Nigeria’s Health
Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the death toll from a cholera
outbreak in northern Nigerian has risen to 231 while 4,600 others
have been infected.
(AFP, 8/19/10)
2010 Aug 25, Nigerian health
officials warned that the whole country is at risk in a cholera
epidemic that has killed 352 people in only three-months time.
(AP, 8/25/10)
2010 Aug 28, Indian officials
said at least 215 people, mostly children, have died in an outbreak
of Japanese encephalitis in an impoverished region of northern
Indian and that the death toll is likely to soar.
(AFP, 8/28/10)
2010 Sep 3, Chad health
officials said an outbreak of cholera in the Central African nation
has killed at least 41 people.
(AP, 9/4/10)
2010 Sep 5, Bangladesh issued a
red alert over an outbreak of anthrax which has infected nearly 300
people and killed about 150 cattle in the north of the country in
the past two weeks.
(Reuters, 9/5/10)
2010 Sep 6, UNICEF said that
over 300 people have died in Cameroon from the country’s worst
outbreak of cholera in 20 years.
(SFC, 9/7/10, p.A2)
2010 Sep 7, A Health Ministry
official said Japan has confirmed the nation's first case of a new
gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become
drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical
treatment in India.
(AP, 9/7/10)
2010 Sep 13, US health
officials reported that an infectious-disease nightmare is
unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all
antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three
states and are popping up all over the world.
(AP, 9/13/10)
2010 Sep 23, Zimbabwe state
media said a measles outbreak has claimed the lives of 70 children
over the past two weeks, mostly among families from apostolic sects
that shun vaccinations.
(AP, 9/24/10)
2010 Sep 26, Chinese
authorities said five people have been sickened with pneumonic
plague in Tibet and that the deadly disease has killed one of them.
(AP, 9/26/10)
2010 Oct 1, Medicago, a
Canadian company, broke ground at Durham, NC, on its first American
facility. The company genetically manipulates tobacco plants to
produce proteins used in making flu vaccines.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.36)
2010 Oct 6, Researchers
reported in the journal PLoS ONE that samples collected from hives
affected by the colony collapse disorder (CCD) indicated the
presence of a virus as well as a fungus. The two pathogens were not
found in bee colonies not affected by the syndrome.
(AP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 7, China says at least
38 people in the southern part of the country have been infected
with a mosquito-borne virus that causes an illness similar to dengue
fever. This was thought to be China's largest-ever outbreak of the
chikungunya virus, which can cause fevers, joint pain, headaches and
rashes.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 13, Malaysia
criticized the WHO for failing to tackle the spread of dengue in the
region, which saw 242,000 cases of the mosquito-borne disease in
2009 and 831 deaths so far this year.
(AFP, 10/13/10)
2010 Oct 15, In Indonesia a
rabies outbreak on the resort island of Bali has to date killed 100
people. Bali, an island of 3 million people and one of Asia's top
tourist destinations, has been grappling with the outbreak for
nearly two years.
(AP, 10/15/10)
2010 Oct 19, Nicaragua health
officials reported 17 deaths and 600 suspected cases of
leptospirosis in the past month. Most of the cases were in Leon and
Chinandega.
(www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=123022)
2010 Oct 22, In Haiti aid
groups rushed in medicine and other supplies to combat a suspected
cholera outbreak. At least 135 people had already died in the rural
Artibonite region, host to thousands of quake refugees.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 22, The UN Children's
Fund said about 1,555 people have died of cholera in Nigeria this
year, marking a likely peak in a three-year-old surge in the disease
in the country.
(AFP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 23, In Haiti 194 dead
were confirmed dead in the poor Caribbean nation's worst health
crisis since the Jan 12 quake. Authorities said more than 2,000
people were sick. Experts were investigating possible cases in
Croix-des-Bouquet, a suburb of the capital, and radio reports said
there were two dozen cases of diarrhea on Gonave island.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 24, In Haiti a cholera
outbreak, that already left 250 people dead and more than 3,000
sickened, was at the doorstep of an enormous potential breeding
ground: the squalid camps in Port-au-Prince where 1.3 million
earthquake survivors live.
(AP, 10/25/10)
2010 Oct 26, UN officials
counted 3,769 cases of cholera in Haiti and raised the death toll to
284.
(SFC, 10/27/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 29, In Haiti the death
toll from the cholera epidemic rose to 330, as medical teams
desperately sought to contain the outbreak.
(AFP, 10/30/10)
2010 Oct 29, Venezuelan health
workers said an epidemic that may be malaria has killed dozens of
people, decimating three villages of the Yanomami Indians, whose
struggle for survival in a remote part of the Amazon rain forest has
attracted worldwide support.
(AP, 10/30/10)
2010 Nov 8, Haiti health
officials said the cholera epidemic has spread into the capital,
imperiling nearly 3 million people living in Port-au-Prince, nearly
half of them in unsanitary tent camps for the homeless from the Jan.
12 earthquake. The outbreak had already killed at least 544 people.
(AP, 11/9/10)
2010 Nov 9, The WHO said a
polio outbreak in the Congo Republic affected 201 people and caused
104 deaths in the last two weeks. The government in Brazzaville has
declared an emergency and announced plans to vaccinate the entire
population.
(SFC, 11/10/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 11, The WHO said a
rare parasitic disease has killed 260 people in southern Sudan in
the past year, a figure that is threatening to double in the coming
months. Kala azar, or visceral leishmaniasis, is a rare tropical
disease contracted by the bite of a sand fly.
(AFP, 11/12/10)
2010 Nov 12, The UN asked for
$164 million to fight the cholera outbreak in Haiti, as the death
toll reached 724 with 10 of the deaths and 278 cases in the capital
Port-au-Prince.
(AP, 11/12/10)
2010 Nov 15, Haiti's cholera
toll rose above 900, including dozens of deaths in the teeming
capital, as the epidemic showed no sign of abating just two weeks
ahead of presidential elections. Anti-UN riots spread to several
cities and towns, as protesters blaming a contingent of Nepalese
peacekeepers for a deadly outbreak of cholera barricaded roads and
exchanged gunfire with UN soldiers in clashes that lasted late into
the night. Protests in Cap Haitien left at least 2 people dead.
(AFP, 11/15/10)(AP, 11/16/10)(AFP, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 17, Haiti's health
ministry said that 1,100 people have now died from cholera. In
Cap-Haitien anti-UN riots disrupted international efforts to tackle
a spreading cholera epidemic, increasing the risk of infection and
death for tens of thousands of poor Haitians in the north.
(AFP, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 27, The British
government said it is paying for more than 1,000 medical staff to
work in Haiti as part of an aid package worth more than 5.6 million
pounds to help combat a deadly cholera outbreak there.
(AFP, 11/27/10)
2010 Dec 2, NASA researcher
Felisa Wolfe-Simon (33) reported that a strange bacterium,
Halomonadaceae, found in California's Mono Lake, thrives on arsenic
and redefines life as we know it. She said the bacterium does not
merely eat arsenic, but incorporates the toxic element directly into
its DNA. Her finding stirred much controversy.
(Reuters, 12/2/10)(SFC, 5/28/11, p.C1)
2010 Dec 3, The death toll in
Haiti’s cholera epidemic reached nearly 1,900 people since erupting
less than two months ago. The Health Ministry said there have been
more than 80,000 cases since it was first detected in late October.
The Pan-American Health Organization projected it could sicken
400,000 people within a year.
(AP, 12/3/10)
2010 Dec 6, Haitian medical
sources said fully 140 people have died of cholera in recent days in
the southwest, a region that had been largely spared the epidemic.
Officials raised the death toll to over 2,000 since the outbreak
began in October.
(AFP, 12/6/10)(SFC, 12/7/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 7, An expert report
submitted to the French foreign ministry said respected French
epidemiologist Professor Renaud Piarroux conducted a study in Haiti
last month and concluded the epidemic began with an imported strain
of the disease that could be traced back to the Nepalese base.
(AFP, 12/7/10)
2010 Dec 10, UNICEF said a
polio outbreak in CongoDRC has caused over 200 deaths. Most of those
affected were young men between the ages of 15 and 24.
(SFC, 12/11/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 16, China’s General
Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine
said in a statement that it has banned poultry and poultry product
imports from Manitoba, Canada, after an outbreak of low-pathogenic
H5N2 bird flu there.
(Reuters, 12/16/10)
2010 Dec 27, An Egyptian
Ministry of Health official said a resurgent H1N1 swine flu virus
has infected 1,172 people in Egypt and killed 56 since October 8.
(Reuters, 12/28/10)
2011 Jan 1, In South Korea one
of five wild ducks found dead this week was confirmed to have been
infected with a lethal strain of the bird flu virus, its first
outbreak in over two years.
(AFP, 1/1/10)
2011 Feb 5, In India doctors in
Gujarat reported two more cases of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever,
a tick-borne virus endemic to parts of Africa. 4 people in Gujarat
had already died of the disease this year.
(Econ, 2/12/11, p.68)
2011 Feb 7, Britain’s Guardian
newspaper reported that scientists in Britain have successfully
tested a vaccine which could work against all known flu strains.
(AFP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 12, A Cambodian mother
died from bird flu after preparing and eating meat contaminated by
the deadly H5N1 virus. Her 11-month-old son died on Feb 17. A
5-year-old girl died earlier this month in Phnom Penh, a case also
linked to contact with sick poultry.
(AP, 2/24/11)
2011 Feb 17, Hong Kong’s health
authority said at least 12 people have died from swine flu in less
than a month, after the latest death from the disease.
(AFP, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 20, It was reported
that researchers have found a 225-percent increase in oral cancer
cases in the United States from 1974 to 2007, mainly among white
men. US scientists have said there is strong evidence linking oral
sex to cancer, and urged more study of how human papillomaviruses
may be to blame for a rise in oral cancer among white men.
(AFP, 2/20/11)
2011 Feb 28, Indian police said
they have arrested Sanjay Shah, the manager of a company that made
intravenous fluids suspected of killing 13 pregnant women at Umaid
Hospital in Jodhpur. The deaths occurred over a 13-day period from
February 13.
(AFP, 2/28/11)
2011 Mar 3, Dr. Richard B.
Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center,
said he has found conclusive evidence of alien life, fossils of
bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1
carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on
planet Earth.) His findings were published today in the Journal of
Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Scientists inside and
outside NASA distanced themselves from Hoover saying he does not
have expertise in astrobiology.
(http://tinyurl.com/4t485yy)(SFC, 3/8/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 3, Mexican
agricultural officials say they have euthanized 114 peacocks,
ostriches and other birds at a zoo due to an avian virus.
(AP, 3/4/11)
2011 Mar 4, The UN said its
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Organization for
Animal Health (OIE) has sent a team of animal health experts
to North Korea to help manage an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease
that could worsen a food crisis.
(AFP, 3/4/11)
2011 Mar 7, Japan's health
ministry halted the use of vaccines made by Pfizer Inc and
Sanofi-Aventis SA that prevent meningitis and pneumonia following
the recent deaths of four children. The deaths happened between
March 2 and March 4.
(Reuters, 3/7/11)
2011 Mar 17, A Venezuelan
government official said one person has died of swine flu and six
others have been diagnosed with the virus.
(AP, 3/17/11)
2011 May 11, Canadian
researchers reported an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a
staph "superbug." Scientists detected drug-resistant staph bacteria
in bedbugs from three hospital patients from St. Paul's Hospital
located in a downtrodden Vancouver neighborhood.
(AP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 21, It was reported
that a mutated form of equine herpes virus-1 has killed at
least 7 horses and sickened another 37 in 8 states including 14 in
California.
(SFC, 5/21/11, p.D1)
2011 May 23, Dominican Rep.
Deputy Health Minister Jose Rodriguez said there have been 1,143
cases of cholera and 14 deaths since the outbreak began in November.
The number of new cases reported today is up about 50 percent since
the middle of May.
(AP, 5/23/11)
2011 May 27, Australian
anesthesiologist, Dr. James Latham Peters (61), was charged with
endangering his patients' lives after police alleged he infected
nearly 50 women with hepatitis C at an abortion clinic.
(AP, 5/27/11)
2011 May 28, German government
officials said two more people have died of a bacterial outbreak
allegedly caused by contaminated Spanish cucumbers, bringing the
number of deaths to nine. Almost 300 people were sick with
haemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, in recent days. HUS is a rare
complication arising from an infection most commonly associated with
E. coli, a bacterium found in undercooked beef or contaminated food.
Almost a dozen people with HUS have been hospitalized in Sweden in
the past two weeks after travel to Germany. In Denmark, eight people
are hospitalized with E.coli infection that could be linked to the
outbreak. The E. coli was later identified as type O104:H4.
(AP, 5/28/11)(AP, 5/29/11)(Econ, 6/4/11, p.63)
2011 May 30, Russia banned the
import of all vegetables from Germany and Spain and warned the
sanction could soon be applied to the rest of Europe because of the
deadly E. coli bacteria scare. German officials suspect the deadly
strain, which has already killed 12 people, may have come from
organic cucumbers imported from Spain.
(AFP, 5/30/11)
2011 May 31, The death from a
food-borne bacterial outbreak in Germany rose to 16 with nearly 400
people suffering severe symptoms. Scientists were unsure of which
produce and which country was responsible for the unusual E. coli
germ.
(SFC, 6/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 2, Spain's prime
minister hit out at the European Commission and Germany for singling
out the country's produce as a possible source of a deadly bacterial
outbreak in Europe, and said the government would demand
explanations and reparations. The World Health Organization said the
E. coli bacteria responsible for a mysterious outbreak that has left
18 people dead and sickened hundreds is a new strain that has never
been seen before. The illness had now spread to at least 10 European
countries and fanned uncertainty about eating tomatoes, cucumbers
and lettuce.
(AP, 6/2/11)
2011 Jun 2, In Haiti relief
organization Oxfam said clinics in the Carrefour area west of
downtown Port-au-Prince are seeing a sharp rise in cholera, with
over 300 new cases per day.
(AP, 6/2/11)
2011 Jun 6, German officials
retracted their assertion that the E.coli epidemic was caused by
bean sprouts from an organic farm. They said there was not enough
data to determine if the farm was in fact the source of the deadly
outbreak, which sickened people all over Europe and resulted in
twenty-two deaths.
(AP, 6/6/11)
2011 Jun 9, German authorities
reported that 3 more people have died from E. coli raising the toll
to 29 in less than 6 weeks.
(SFC, 6/10/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 10, The death toll
from the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, has risen to 151. A number of
survivors were now returning to the hospital suffering from severe
fungal infections, called zygomycosis, in their wounds.
(AP, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 10, Laboratory tests
have determined that the E. coli epidemic in Germany and parts of
Europe was in fact caused by contaminated bean sprouts from an
organic farm. German authorities had been forced to retract their
assertion that the sprouts were to blame, but now, high-tech
laboratory testing proved that the sprouts were the culprit in the
outbreak that has killed 31 people and sickened nearly 3,000
Germans.
(AP, 6/10/11)(SFC, 6/11/11, p.A3)
2011 Jun 16, In France a 7th
child was hospitalized with an E. coli infection after eating meat
that manufacturers said could come from Germany, where an outbreak
of the bacteria has killed 37 people.
(AFP, 6/16/11)
2011 Jun 23, Germany's national
disease control center said the death toll from Europe's E. coli
outbreak has risen to 43, up from 39 a day earlier. One person has
died in Sweden.
(AP, 6/23/11)
2011 Jun 27, Germany's national
disease control center said the death toll from the E. coli outbreak
has risen to 47 including one person in Sweden.
(AP, 6/27/11)
2011 Jun 28, The UN officially
declared that the rinderpest disease has been wiped off the face of
the Earth. The UN program to eradicate the animal disease began in
1945 and cost some $5 billion.
(SFC, 6/28/11, p.A4)
2011 Jun 30, India’s media
reported that at least 17 infants have died in the last 48 hours at
the government-run B.C. Roy Hospital for Children in Kolkata, West
Bengal. In 2006, 22 infants died in three days at the same hospital
because of prematurity or acute forms of either meningitis,
encephalitis or septicemia.
(AP, 6/30/11)
2011 Jun, In Haiti the number
of cholera cases each day spiked to 1,700 in Mid-June.
(SSFC, 7/10/11, p.A6)
2011 Jul 1, Doctors without
Borders (MSF) said cholera has claimed 153 lives out of 2,787 cases
in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the
provinces. MSF said that the outbreak began in March in the
northeastern city of Kisangani, and soon spread westwards, with the
first cases reported in Kinshasa on June 20.
(AFP, 7/1/11)
2011 Jul 1, In India scientists
warned that water off the famed beaches of the Indian holiday state
of Goa was unfit for bathing and fishing due to high levels of
bacteria from untreated sewage.
(AFP, 7/1/11)
2011 Jul 2, Australian
officials worked to isolate potential victims after uncovering two
more cases of the deadly horse-borne Hendra virus, which has erupted
in New south Wales and Queensland. Hendra can lead to fatal
respiratory illness and has killed four of the seven people who have
contracted it in Australia since it was first documented in 1994.
(AFP, 7/2/11)
2011 Jul 5, The EU announced
action against Egyptian bean and seed imports, after tests indicated
that a 15-ton batch of Egyptian fenugreek seeds imported in 2009 to
Germany and then distributed elsewhere was at the root of an E.coli
outbreak that killed 50 people.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 5, Jamaica said it has
shuttered all citrus nurseries in an attempt to check the spread of
bacteria causing the incurable “citrus greening” disease. The
bacteria has hobbled citrus production in parts of China and
infested millions of trees in Florida and Brazil.
(SFC, 7/6/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 8, US health officials
confirmed the death of an Arizona man from the same E. coli bacteria
blamed for an outbreak in Germany. He had visited Germany and died
last month.
(SFC, 7/9/11, p.A5)
2011 Jul 11, Japanese
scientists were reported to have found a "superbug" strain of
gonorrhea that is resistant to all recommended antibiotics. They
said it could transform a once easily treatable infection into a
global public health threat.
(Reuters, 7/11/11)
2011 Jul 14, Switzerland
suspended imports of some seeds, beans and sprouts from Egypt, after
the EU blamed Egyptian fenugreek seeds for E.coli outbreaks in
Germany and France. The temporary ban would expire in October 31,
2011, in line with the EU's suspension.
(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 15, UNICEF said at
least 17,584 measles cases, including 114 deaths, have been reported
by Ethiopian health officials in the first half of the year. The WHO
said says at least 462 cases of measles, including 11 deaths, have
been confirmed in recent months among Somali refugee children in the
Kenyan refugee complex known as Dadaab.
(AP, 7/15/11)
2011 Jul 21, About 100 Swazi
AIDS activists marched to the finance ministry to demand that the
kingdom not allow a crippling financial crisis to interrupt the
supply of life-saving drugs. Swaziland has the world's highest HIV
infection rate, with one in four adults carrying the virus.
(AFP, 7/21/11)
2011 Jul 26, Australia
authorities said a lethal bat-borne horse virus has been detected in
a dog for the first time, prompting fears it has jumped species.
(AP, 7/26/11)
2011 Aug 3, US meat giant
Cargill said it is recalling 36 million pounds of ground turkey
linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has killed one
person in California and sickened at least 76 others. The fresh and
frozen ground turkey products were produced at the company's
Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2.
(AP, 8/3/11)
2011 Aug 14, In Cambodia a
6-year-old girl died from bird flu. She was the eighth person to die
from the H5N1 flu virus this year in Cambodia.
(AP, 8/24/11)
2011 Aug 17, US health
officials said two children and a young man have died this summer
from the brain-eating Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba that lives in
water. About 120 US cases, almost all of them deaths, have been
reported since the amoeba was identified in the early 1960s,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(AP, 8/18/11)
2011 Aug 17, Doctors in
Trinidad said PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar is among the nearly 1,700
people who have been diagnosed with hemorrhagic dengue, a
mosquito-born virus. He was expected to recover.
(AP, 8/18/11)
2011 Aug 19, Vietnamese
officials said hand, foot and mouth disease has killed 81 children
and continues to surge. PM Nguyen Tan Dung called for stepped up
efforts for prevention.
(SFC, 8/20/11, p.A2)
2011 Aug 29, The UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned about a new mutant strain of
the deadly bird flu H5N1 virus (H5N1 - 2.3.2.1.) in China and
Vietnam, saying there could be a "major resurgence" of the disease.
(AFP, 8/29/11)
2011 Aug 30, Nigerian officials
said cholera has killed 35 people in northern Sokoto and Yobe states
in recent days.
(AFP, 8/30/11)
2011 Sep 13, An online 200-page
paper by Project CLAMER, a collaboration of 17 European marine
institutes, said the rising temperature of ocean water is causing a
proliferation of the Vibrio genus of bacteria, which can cause food
poisoning, serious gastroenteritis, septicemia and cholera.
(AP, 9/14/11)
2011 Sep 14, The World Health
Organization issued a report saying cases of tuberculosis resistant
to a multitude of drug treatments are rising at an alarming rate
across Europe.
(SFC, 9/15/11, p.A5)
2011 Sep 20, The World Health
Organization warned countries that a dangerous strain of polio,
WPV1, has spread to China from Pakistan.
(SFC, 9/21/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 23, Nigerian officials
said a fresh cholera outbreak in the north has killed at least six
people, raising the overall toll in the country to more than over
200 in recent months.
(AFP, 9/23/11)
2011 Sep 27, The US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said that 72 illnesses, including as
many as 17 deaths, are linked to tainted Colorado cantaloupe.
Colorado state and local officials said they are investigating three
additional deaths that may be connected. Cantaloupes from Jensen
Farms were recalled on Sep 10.
(AP, 9/28/11)(SFC, 10/1/11, p.A6)
2011 Sep 30, Central African
Republic health minister Jean-Michel Mandaba said a new cholera
epidemic has hit the country and has already claimed at least 10
victims in the south.
(AFP, 9/31/11)
2011 Oct 10, In Haiti an
official with Doctors Without Borders said the number of cholera
cases seen in Port-au-Prince has jumped about threefold in recent
weeks.
(AP, 10/10/11)
2011 Oct 11, UNICEF, the UN
children's agency, warned that the west and central Africa region is
facing one of the worst cholera epidemics in its history, with over
85,000 cases reported leading to 2,466 deaths this year. The most
significant increases were in Chad, Cameroon, and in western
Democratic Republic of Congo.
(AFP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 15, Indian officials
said at least 430 people, mainly children, have died from an
outbreak of encephalitis in a deeply neglected region of the
northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
(AFP, 10/15/11)
2011 Oct 17, Canadian
scientists announced that a contagious and lethal fish virus has
been detected for the first time in wild Pacific salmon. The
European strain of the virus had only been identified before in
farm-raised Atlantic salmon.
(Reuters, 10/20/11)
2011 Oct 18, The search for the
world's first malaria vaccine received a boost with the release of
early results from a major clinical trial showing it cut risk by
about half in African children. The vaccine, known as RTS,S, is made
by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's lab in
Belgium. It is the first of its kind to attempt to block a parasite,
rather than bacteria or viruses.
(AFP, 10/19/11)
2011 Oct 18, In Haiti Dr. Paul
Farmer said the local cholera outbreak is now the worst in the world
with over 6,000 people killed and over 450,000 people sickened.
(SFC, 10/19/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct, Pakistan reported its
115th case of polio. The current annual global number was down to
about 1000.
(Econ, 10/15/11, p.48)
Go to
http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Microbiology
Working list of organisms:
Bordatella pertussis causes whooping cough.
(SFC, 12/15/05, p.B5)
Campylobacteriosis is caused by campylobacter jejuni, a bacterium
common to poultry that causes acute intestinal disorders in people.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A1)
Clostridium difficile causes virulent diarrhea in the elderly. In
2004 2 Canadian hospitals reported over 100 deaths due to this
bacterium over the last 18 months. C. difficile makes poison-forming
spores that become reservoirs of infection. The rod-shaped bacteria
tends to become active in the human colon when antibiotics knock out
beneficial organisms.
(SFC, 8/9/04, p.A5)(Econ, 5/27/06, p.75)
Clostridium sordellii produces a potentially fatal toxin when
swallowed or introduced to a wound.
(SFC, 11/28/01, p.A5)
Cryptococcus gattii, a fungus normally found in Australia and other
tropical zones, was discovered on Vancouver Island, Canada, in 1999.
By 2007 at least 8 people had died from infection and another 163
sickened.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A11)
Enterobacter sakazakii infected a Portagen powdered infant formula
in 2001.
(SFC, 4/13/02, p.A6)
Halobacterium, archaea kingdom, thrives in the saltiest bodies of
water.
(NH, 6/01, p.56)
Leishmaniasis is a parasitic infection, often fatal, that is
transmitted by sand flies. In 2005 the antibiotic paromomycin was
shown to be effective against visceral leishmaniasis.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.C2)(Econ, 4/16/05, p.69)(SFC,
11/9/04, p.A6)
Leprosy now known as Hansen’s disease is caused by the mycobacterium
m. leprae bacillus.
(SFC,11/22/97, p.A11)
Mycobacterium fortuitum, a single-celled bacterium, rarely caused
infection in humans but can invade open wounds. Some 80 women in
Santa Cruz county came down with purple boils and lesions following
pedicures at a local nail salon in Watsonville.
(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.D10)
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the world’s #1 infectious killer. It
hides out in white blood cells and may enter a state of latency for
years. It seems to slow or stop replicating when nitric oxide levels
are high.
(NH, 6/01, p.54)
Necrotizing fasciitis results from a tissue-dissolving bacterial
infection common to junkies.
(SSFC, 11/30/03, p.A1)
Prochlorococcus marinus, a cyanobacterium. The most abundant
photosynthetic microbe on Earth.
(NH, 6/01, p.52)
Rickettsia prowazekii, the typhus causing pathogen. It can survive
only within other cells.
(NH, 6/01, p.57)
Salmonella typhi, the cause of typhoid fever.
(ON, 7/01, p.11)
Serratia, a common bacteria found in soil, water, plants and
animals.
(WSJ, 10/7/04, p.B6)
Trypanosoma cruzi, a protozoan carried by kissing bugs (barbeiros),
caused Chagas disease.
(WSJ, 4/11/07, p.A1)
Vibrio cholerae, a bacillus responsible for cholera.
(ON, 5/05, p.10)
Vibrio parahaemolyticus bacteria is carried by shellfish and can
cause diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, headache and
fever especially in people with weakened immune systems.
(SFC, 8/23/00, p.A20)
Vibrio vulnificus, a saltwater bacteria, is common in the Gulf and
most prevalent in coastal and bay waters in warmer months. The
bacteria can be ingested in contaminated seafood or absorbed through
skin wounds.
(AP, 8/14/04)
Yersinia pestis bacteria causes plague and is spread by fleas
carried by rodents.
End of file