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Category: Military
Alchemists Gone Bad: What You Should Know About Biological Warfare
Spears. Bows and arrows. Swords. Guns. Bombs. Drones. Microbes. The evolution of weapons and forms of warfare shadows our technological advancements, from the field of metallurgy to that of microbiology.
A 1942 American propaganda poster derived from President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech following the Pearl Harbor attacks. The poster, and other forms of PSAs that followed, are exemplary of the domestic sacrifices asked of Americans in the face of war – even with the possibility of nuclear and biological warfare after WWII. Image: Library of Congress. Click for source.
A Moldy Cantaloupe & The Dawn of Penicillin
For something that grows so carelessly and freely on our fruits and breads, mass producing the white mold and its hidden wonder drug penicillin was devilishly difficult. After Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of a bacteria-killing mold contaminating his cultures of Staphylococcus aureus, it languished as a laboratory parlor trick until World War II and the desperate need for treatments to fight bacterial infections became quickly apparent (1).
Sex, War & Revolution: The Epidemiology of Gonorrhea in the USA
It’s not often that you encounter a graph and you think, “Wow! My god, that is a spectacular graph!” I have such a graph for you, reader, and it just so happens to be about gonorrhea. I know what you’re thinking, “she can really pick ‘em, huh? Exceptional taste in data presentation.”
Behind Enemy Lines: Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Returning US Troops from the Middle East
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988, by all accounts, did not go as well as they had anticipated. The locals were unsupportive of their efforts against the Mujahideen, the notoriously craggy terrain regularly chewed through soldiers’ boots, the Soviet army was frequently unable to provide suitable equipment, food and water to its own troops, and so on.
The Things They Carried: Former POWs, the Burma Railway & Threadworm
I was peering through back issues of Emerging Infectious Diseases as one typically does (amiright? right?) and found a real gem of a letter. A French physician wrote of a special patient that had recently visited his practice, an 83-year old Parisian gentleman complaining of fatigue and weight loss. Upon clinical examination, he discovered the man had hyper-eosinophilia (high numbers of granulocytes, a type of white blood cells) indicating that something might be a bit off – either an allergic reaction or some sort of infection (1). A series of tests were run, including a stool sample, but nothing definitive was detected.
The parasite Strongyloides stercoralis, otherwise known as threadworm due to its filiform shape. What a cutie pie! Image: eHow. Click for source.
Blood Money: Hookworm Economics in the Postbellum South
In the early 20th century, the Rockefeller Foundation embarked upon a massive public-health campaign that radically changed the economic landscape of the Southeastern United States. A parasite, the hookworm Necator americanus, not only had been leeching Southerners of their blood and good health but also of their agricultural productivity and wealth.
The Congo, the Crimea & an Eight-Legged Arthropod
I love this picture of a female lone start tick and her enormous egg mass not just because of the striking imagery, but because it confronts the viewer with a major difficulty commonly encountered in tick and tick-borne disease control – reducing the dangers of a relatively small but fast reproducing species capable of stealthy and lethal infection. Many public health and entomology initiatives focus on mosquitoes but I’ve always found ticks to be the more fascinating arthropod. They’ve got that essential “creepy” factor but they’re also prodigious reproducers and can transmit a slew of truly nasty diseases. Renewed interest for public health practitioners in these creatures stems from the growing problem of habitat change that is resulting in increasing numbers of habitats and climates well-suited to ticks.
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Science Seeker Award
Open Lab 2012
