Ebola: The Serious, The Fun, and the Stupid
The Serious Stuff
Ebola (wikipedia), while incredibly rare, is unequivocally one of the most dramatised of virii. This is due in part to the dramatic symptomatology of Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever, the disease caused by the virus, as well as popular culture sources such as the film Outbreak.
Published on 2Jan09, a new paper looks at a specific protein within the Ebola virus, VP3 (read here). This protein is reportedly responsible for inhibiting, or assisting the virus in avoiding, interferon, an integral part of the immune system. Mutations in this protein hence render the virus less immune-resistant, and it is hoped that research will reveal a target for antiviral treatments for this horrendous disease.
Recently Reported Outbreaks of Ebola - WHO (click here)
Set of Posters, ready for printing, for use by healthcare professionals in Ebola affected regions of Africa (click here)
Pandemic! The Board Game (click here)
Fancy yourself as a budding epidemiologist? Try your hand at managing a global pandemic. The game costs $34, and I’m not sure they would ship outside the U.S., but note the fluffy giant microbe you get with your copy.
And.. Why you shouldn’t beleive everything on the internet.
This guy is insane. Dr. Horowitz, of tetrahedron.org, takes the idea of conspiracy theory to new, absolutely ridiculous, and unfortunately rather profitable, heights. Watch his video below, claiming, amongst other things, that Ebola and HIV were manufactured diseases. I can often humour an individual holding a single conspiracy theory or two, we all have one or two crazy ideas that we never really act upon, usually regarding some specific area about which we are highly passionate. But as seen on this character’s website, almost every area of media is covered, from the September 11 attacks (about which Dr. Horowitz had theories by September 12, 2001), to delightful postulates like:
‘Experimental Hepatitis-C vaccine of the 1970’s brought AIDS into the country’ and
“Oral Polio vaccines are still, to this day, contaminated with monkey virus”
The video goes on and on, and I suggest viewing it as stand-up satire, rather than scientific discussion. To dissect the arguments contained therein and systematically critique them, would be to imply that any sort of empirical scienfitic logic had been used to construct them in the first place. If any intrepid reader has the time or desire to write such a critique on this alleged ‘medical colleague‘, let me know and I shall post it for you.
Tags: africa, ebola, horowitz, infectious disease, outbreak, pandemic, WHO