Infectious Diseases

WHEN THE BLACK DEATH RAVAGED EUROPE
in the 14th century, more than a quarter of the population was killed. Today we're better equipped to fight killer germs with vaccinations and antibiotics, but the spread of SARS and other emerging viruses has been cause for alarm. These articles examine the modern-day threat of infectious disease.

In recorded history, no disease has jumped the species barrier to infect humans, caused an epidemic and then never threatened us again — not without the discovery of a vaccine or cure to curtail the microbe.
From The Race to Contain a Virus
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
Jan. 19, 2004

Health officials have long been worried that the next deadly global epidemic — a slate wiper, as epidemiologists call it — would be a new kind of deadly flu to which humans have no resistance.
From The Revenge of the Birds
By Anthony Spaeth
Feb. 9, 2004

As the truth about SARS comes out—slowly, due in large part to government cover-ups in the land of its birth—it is becoming clear that what is taking place in Asia threatens the entire world.
From The Truth About SARS
By Michael D. Lemonick and Alice Park
May 5, 2003

Anthrax is the current focus of the nation's post-Sept. 11 trauma, but it's just one of many potential weapons in bioterrorism's terrible arsenal. How serious a threat are they?
From What's Next?
By Frederick Golden
Nov. 5, 2001

As the HIV virus sweeps mercilessly through these lands — the fiercest trial Africa has yet endured — a few try to address the terrible depredation. The rest of society looks away.
From Death Stalks a Continent
By Johanna McGeary
Feb. 12, 2001

E. coli is not an easy bug to pick up. It's not an airborne pathogen like a flu virus, and it can have an ill effect only if it's ingested. The vast majority of people who do come down with the infection survive if they are kept hydrated and, in some cases, hospitalized.
From Anatomy of an Outbreak
By Jeffrey Kluger
Aug. 3, 1998

What allowed this avian virus to cross the species barrier and set up killing infections in man? Why did it strike the young and hardy with the most ferocity — just as the 1918 virus had? And, most important, … is it circulating more quietly, primed for a 'reassortment event' that will set off the next global disaster?
From The Flu Hunters
By Erik Larson
Feb. 23, 1998

The fight against infectious disease is neither a leisurely war of attrition nor a desperate retreat. Instead, it looms as a protracted guerrilla conflict in which reliable intelligence and rapid reaction are the keys to survival.
From Guerrilla Warfare
By Michael D. Lemonick
Sep. 18, 1996

New scourges are emerging — AIDS is not the only one — and older diseases like tuberculosis are rapidly evolving into forms that are resistant to antibiotics, the main weapon in the doctor's arsenal ... For all the vaunted power of modern medicine, deadly infections are a growing threat to everyone, everywhere.
From The Killers All Around
By Michael D. Lemonick
Sep. 12, 1994

Inside the body, a trillion highly specialized cells, regulated by dozens of remarkable proteins and honed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, launch an unending battle against the alien organisms.
From Stop That Germ!
By Leon Jaroff
May 23, 1988

The U.S. now has a vast reservoir of plague infection among the wild rodents of the West. It is too widespread to be wiped out, and it is spreading eastward.
From The Black Death is Here
Aug. 24, 1942

See our Bird Flu Collection for more articles.