Latest epidemics Stories

U.S. hospitals are notably better prepared for disasters than they were before the September 11 attacks, but experts warned Thursday that their medical facilities are still poorly equipped and in need of vast improvement should any catastrophic event like natural disasters or terrorist attacks occur. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, a 2002 U.S. governmental program was instituted in order to assist hospitals in training their staff and coordinate planning with one another as well as...

A father whose daughter's oral vaccination resulted in him contracting paralytic polio 30 years ago should receive $22.5 million, a New York jury says. The Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance reported Saturday that Dominick Tenuto, 61, was awarded $22.5 million in damages as a result of Lederle Laboratories being deemed entirely liable for Tenuto contracting polio and losing the use of his legs. Tenuto's daughter, Diana, received a Lederle vaccination called Orimune in May 1979 while she was an...

Nuns and priests risked their lives to care for plague victims in Renaissance France, says a new study that associates contact with infectious plague victims to the demise of many religious order constituents.The study is one of the first to discover that the plague, a fatal bacterial disease called "the Black Death," can be swiftly and precisely found in ancient human remains.A few women who perished after aiding plague victims were Benedictine nuns that lived in the Sainte-Croix...

BALTIMORE, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Data by Dr. J. Bart Classen published this week in Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews provides further evidence that epidemics of type 2 diabetes/obesity/metabolic syndrome, like type 1 diabetes, are linked to immunization. Classen previously published proof vaccines are causing an epidemic of type 1 diabetes in children. The new data as well as Classen's recently published data demonstrate that the epidemics of type 1...

Eric York lugged the carcass of an adult mountain lion from his truck and laid it carefully on a tarp on the floor of his garage during October last year. The biologist at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, found the big cat lying motionless near the canyon's South Rim. He was determined to learn why she died.The female mountain lion had a bloody nose, but her hide bore no other signs of trauma. York did the postmortem in his garage, in a village of about 2,000 park employees. The park...

Scientists announced on Wednesday that previously unexplainable outbreaks of plague in the U.S. may be linked to climate change in the Pacific Ocean.Scientists from Norway, The US and Sweden found that the number of infections in the US seemed to shift along with changing climate conditions known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).The outbreaks seemed to occur during times of warm, wet conditions, authors wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. The so-called "Black Death" is...

Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today. Seven thousand people died per day in Cairo. Three-quarters of Florence's residents were buried in makeshift graves in just one macabre year. One third of China evaporated before the rest of the world knew what was coming. By the time the tornado-like destruction of the 14th-century bubonic plague finally dissipated,...

Initially, some experts believed that the Black Death that decimated entire populations in Europe and elsewhere during the middle of the 14th century was a blindly indiscriminate killer, but a new study reveals that this may not be the case.According to AP, two U.S. scientists said on Monday that analysis of 490 skeletons from a London cemetery for Black Death victims demonstrated that the infection did not affect everyone equally. The study reveals that while many perfectly healthy people...

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE -- A squirrel trapped at an Angeles National Forest picnic area has tested positive for bubonic plague, prompting county health officials to take precautions against the deadly disease. The ground squirrel was trapped July 10 at the Stoneyvale Picnic Area about five miles north of La Canada Flintridge as part of routine disease monitoring, the county Department of Health said. The picnic area has been dusted for fleas -- which can transmit the disease from rodents to...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexicans have long been taught to blame diseases brought by the Spaniards for wiping out most of their Indian ancestors. But recent research suggests things may not be that simple.While the initial big die-offs are still blamed on the Conquistadors who started arriving in 1519, even more virulent epidemics in 1545 and 1576 may have been caused by a native blood-hemorrhaging fever spread by rats, Mexican researchers say.The idea has sparked heated debate in Mexican academic...