The Best Interesting Random Facts
If some evil genius wanted to create a really virulent and versatile bacterium, he might model his creation on Staphylococcus aureus, a spherical gram-positive organism that grows in clusters that under a microscope look like bunches of grapes. This is a germ that really has what it takes. It can grow in temperatures ranging from […]
You may think that sexually transmitted infections are someone else’s problem, but in fact 55 million Americans have at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD). More than 45 million Americans have HSV-2, the sexually transmitted form of the herpes simplex virus, and a million more get it every year. There’s no cure for it. Two […]
The most common cause of serious respiratory tract infections, pneumonia and bronchiolitis (infection of the small vessels in the lungs called bronchioles), in infants and children is a germ called respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This is another very common virus, so common that by the age of three almost every kid has been infected […]
A tattoo parlor doesn’t seem like a particularly salubrious place, and having someone stick a needle through your skin seems obviously to carry some risk, but the risk of getting any blood-borne disease by getting a tattoo are extremely low, at least in the United States. Although it is of course theoretically possible to transmit […]
There are dozens of different species of cockroach, and the one probably most familiar in restaurants is the German cockroach. Many people believe that cockroach infestation is one of the burdens of living in a crowded city, but in fact the insects can and do live in the wide open spaces of rural areas just […]
Suffolk County, New York, has beautiful beaches and beautiful people. Rich New Yorkers own elaborate summer houses there, in different neighborhoods from the local year-rounders who serve them, of course. Those who don’t own can rent them, rentals at $20,000 a month and more are common. Some people commute to jobs in Manhattan from Suffolk. […]
Pyromania is, according to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), “deliberate and purposeful fire setting on more than one occasion.” Prior to the act of fire setting, there is an increase in tension, and there is a long-held fascination with fire. Once the fire is set, there is a sense of relief or joy. Fires set by people […]
Botulism is extremely rare in adults, is somewhat more common in infants (there are about 80 or so cases a year, while 2 or 3 cases of adult botulism per year would be about average). The effects of the disease in infants can range from fairly mild to death, in fact, it is one of […]
Alliance, Ohio, is a town of about 25,000 people southeast of Akron. It is famous, if we use the word loosely, as the site of a yearly carnation festival every August and the home of the particular variety of carnation that President William McKinley favored as a lapel decoration. But one day in June 2001, […]
You may remember Chlamydia trachomatis, it’s the bacterium that causes the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States, chlamydia. A closely related species, Chlamydia psittaci, infects pet birds (and more rarely certain wild birds as well) and can be transmitted to humans, who can get flu-like symptoms from it, and sometimes more serious […]
A microorganism is a living entity that is so small it can only be seen with the aid of a microscope. A pathogen is an organism that causes disease. Examples of pathogens include bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Note that a pathogen does not have to be a microorganism; some parasitic worms cause disease and […]
Some people love mice and rats and keep them as pets. The white ones with the pink eyes are nice, very soft and furry, and many people love them as much as they love their dogs. And they may be man’s best friend in another sense as well: they are by far the most common […]
Dirty laundry, as you might have guessed, certainly contains plenty of germs, including many that are pathogenic. Any cloth that touches your body is likely to become contaminated with whatever organisms are on your skin, and we know what can happen in the special case of underwear. But the Centers for Disease Control agrees with […]
E. coli O157:H7 is a threat with young children not only because it can make them quite ill, but also because they can shed it in their feces for up to two weeks after their illness resolves, giving them plenty of opportunity to pass the disease on to others. Older children don’t usually carry the […]
Viruses are parasitic. They can only live and reproduce inside the cells of other animals or plants, in scientific terms, they are called obligate survive in one environment (if a germ can survive in more than one environment, it is called facultative); they are intracellular because they must live inside cells; they are molecular parasites […]
You’ll find that the rice flours are as common to gluten-free baking as wheat flour is to traditional baking. There are subtle differences between these three flours, primarily with respect to baking performance. From a dietary fiber and protein perspective they are similar to each other, except that brown rice flour has approximately forty fewer […]
How do we find out about new strains in time to develop new vaccines against them? The World Health Organization, in cooperation with dozens of other national and international health groups, maintains the Global Outbreak Alert and Response program to provide continuous surveillance of infectious disease outbreaks around the world. This program covers all kinds […]
In the late summer and fall of 1998 Listeria monocytogenes, a gram-positive bacterium that lives everywhere in the world except Antarctica, caused about 40 illnesses in ten different U.S. states. The CDC in cooperation with state health departments in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee determined that all these cases came from a single strain […]
The group of viruses that are transmitted by insects are called (and this is not a technical term) “arboviruses.” The term is a coinage based on “ARthropod BOrne Virus.” West Nile, transmitted by a mosquito, is one of these. There are several other viruses transmitted by insects to humans, all of them quite rare in […]
“Look! I’m jumping off the diving board.” “Dad, watch me ride my bike.” “Watch me do a cartwheel.” Children constantly ask their parents to pay attention. Even in the car, a child will ask a parent who’s driving to look at a picture in his book or watch him make faces in the mirror. He […]
Several vaccines were developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian microbiologist who spent much of his time in India, developed a vaccine for cholera in 1892 and a vaccine for bubonic plague in 1897. Given the millions of people who have died over the centuries from these diseases, these two […]
The recovery model, or philosophy, has much in common with the harm reduction approach. Fueled by dissatisfaction with the status quo and the paternalistic “trust me, I’m a doctor” medical model, the recovery model is about giving control back to the person with the psychiatric disability and/or coexisting substance disorder. In the recovery model, the […]
It may be some time before Mr. Lynn’s clean-hands identification mechanism is in widespread use, but in the meantime, you might want to wash your hands more often anyway, whether you can be caught at it or not. There is indisputable evidence that washing hands, we’re talking about the general public here, not surgical personnel, […]
Everyone likes to touch interesting and attractive objects. Adults in stores are drawn to gadgets they can manipulate and products they can pick up and feel. Children also want to handle what they see in stores, but many store owners and parents are too impatient or fearful to let children touch. Touching is one of […]
Some people never learn. In October 1996, a three-week-old boy was brought into a hospital emergency room in Arizona suffering from a fever of 103.6, plus vomiting and bloody diarrhea that had been going on for more than two weeks. Why it took two weeks for the parents to bring him in is almost certainly […]
You go to a hospital to get well, but you have to remember that a hospital is one public place that’s bound to be filled with germs, after all, it’s people with germs who wind up there, all kept close together with a staff of caretakers who are almost inevitably going to transmit germs from […]
Young children generally follow their parents’ lead when it comes to believing in imaginary characters. If parents encourage their child to believe the tooth fairy is real, she’s likely to go along with them. And if parents tell their child there’s no such thing as the tooth fairy, she’ll probably accept that as fact. Of […]
Kids are unquestionably messy, and the younger they are the messier they seem to be. Growing up involves an incessant series of encounters with germs of all kinds. Babies begin by fouling themselves with germ-laden feces, then as soon as they’re able to they start putting everything they can lift into their mouths. Next they […]
Bacteriologists are quite proud when their name becomes attached to a disease causing organism. This is not true of other people, American Legion members are not at all happy about having Legionnaire’s disease named after them, and homeowners and real estate agents in Lyme, Connecticut, could have done without having their city’s name permanently attached […]
If we want to search for something good to come out of the 1918 disaster, perhaps we can find it in the spur to research in virology that it provoked. In the 10 years after 1918, thousands of books and articles were published about the flu. One large problem posed by the flu virus is […]
In 1918, the flu season came on a bit early, in April, but a few weeks before that 84,000 additional American troops had set out for Europe to fight the Germans, so there were more important things to worry about than the “grippe.” That some people died during the spring was unremarkable, before there were […]
Rats, mice, flies, cockroaches, these are just things you can run into at almost any restaurant at one time or another. Every time you go out, you’re exposing yourself to something. In fact, those dollar bills in your wallet, the ones you plan to spend for the taxi ride downtown before you even do anything, […]
A lot of people worry about “picking up something” while they’re using public transportation. In New York City, the most feared location for mysophobes is undoubtedly the subway. Everyone squashed together, sneezing, coughing, wiping their noses, and then grabbing those poles to keep from falling over every time the train stops, starts, or lurches. The […]
Ever get your nails done at a nail salon? A lot of people do: nail care is a $6 billion a year industry in the United States, and there are tens of thousands of nail salons all across the country, 7,500 in California alone. One day in 2001 a dermatologist called the health department and […]
Here’s a word we hope you’ve never heard before: myiasis. Myiasis refers to diseases caused by the deposition of insects or insect larvae in living tissue. And this happens in real life, in both animals and man, and not just in horror movies. One Indian boy, it was reported in 2001, actually had a wound […]
Swenson’s Wild Midwest Exotic Petting Zoo is apparently a popular attraction in Clermont, Iowa, and in August 1999 they featured a bear cub. It was really cute, and it let people touch it and wrestle with it. Occasionally it would nip at people, but it never really hurt anyone. The cub was also brought to […]
