MetaFilter posts tagged with smallpox

Don't be a sitting duck

tellurian — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:05:53 -0800

Subivor - People should have more protection than a necktie, their shirt or paper towel to cover their mouth, nose and eyes. They need Moist Towelettes too. [via]

TED talks, give it a listen.

sixacross — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:23:59 -0800

TED talks is a collection of presentations given at the most recent installment of the annual convention of leading technologists, entertainers, and designers (prev iously). From the $100 laptop to the eradication of smallpoxto new ways of visualizing data and a charming and humorous look at education, there's a lot to chew on and more to come. Inspired yet? here's some more reading material. via

Something you never want to hear in a lab

docgonzo — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:46:56 -0800

Ow, ow, I think I got smallpox in my eye.

A pox on both your houses...

Irontom — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:35:11 -0800

New form of mousepox developed. A scientist has created an extremely deadly form of mousepox (a relative of smallpox) through genetic engineering. The new virus kills mice even if they have been given antiviral drugs as well as a vaccine that would normally protect them.

monkeypox

stbalbach — Sun, 08 Jun 2003 08:25:05 -0800

"We have an outbreak" (James Hughes, director of the CDC). At least 19 people in three Midwestern states have contracted a disease related to smallpox marking the first outbreak of the life-threatening illness in the United States. The disease is known as monkeypox.

can a screensaver find the cure?

greengrl — Wed, 05 Feb 2003 10:00:32 -0800

Oxford University is looking to take advantage of distributed computing to find a cure for smallpox. Much like SETI@Home, the Smallpox Protection Project and Oxford's effort to cure cancer rely on individual computer users to download and run screensaver software to crunch numbers in an effort to speed up processing of large amounts of data. How will this kind of initiative impact science in the future? Can we, by volunteering our processors, be part of the quest for a cure?

smallpox and reason

specialk420 — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 11:32:26 -0800

plain talk about small pox
tired of scare stories being spread by some about - WMDs - ?? an excellent article here.

Smallpox Vaccination?

fold_and_mutilate — Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:26:25 -0800

Smallpox Vaccination? The New England Journal of Medicine made available today an early release of articles from their planned January 30, 2003 issue, designed "to help inform the current national debate about smallpox vaccination" [more inside....articles unfortunately available only in PDF....]

Mack Twain — Mon, 30 Sep 2002 01:57:12 -0800

The Demon in the Freezer An article by the author of The Hot Zone. " The water contained the whole molecules of life from variola, a parasite that had colonized us thousands of years ago. We had almost freed ourselves of it, but we found we had developed a strong affinity for smallpox. Some of us had made it into a weapon, and now we couldn't get rid of it. I wondered if we ever would, for the story of our entanglement with smallpox is not yet ended".

crunchland — Wed, 10 Apr 2002 17:13:14 -0800

I guess it trumps dying a horrible death (but not by much) ... "A young calf has his belly shaved. Many slashes are made in the skin. A prior batch of smallpox vaccine is dropped into the slashes and allowed to fester over a period of days. During this period of time, the calf stands in a head stall so that he can’t lick his belly. The calf is led out of the stock to a table where he is strapped down. His belly scabs and pus are scraped off and ground into a powder. The powder is the next batch of smallpox vaccine." (Excerpt from Vaccines : A Second Opinion, and link swiped wholesale from Randomwalks.)

tomcosgrave — Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:30:10 -0800

SmallPox 2002 - Silent Weapon...
It is April 2002, and a smallpox outbreak occures in New York. 4 and a half months later and 60 million people across the planet are dead. Tonight, The BBC broadcast a fictional documentary as if it were filmed in 2005, looking back at the smallpox pandemic that swept the world in 2002 and killed 60 million people. Heavily rooted in fact, it was disturbing viewing, to put it mildly. Did anyone else in Europe see this?

wfrgms — Thu, 29 Nov 2001 20:27:23 -0800

Will members of the religious right pass on smallpox vaccines in the event of an attack? Apparently many of the smallpox vaccines now in use come from work done in 1966 on aborted fetuses – which presents a small dilemma for some anti-abortion conservatives.

"I think this scenario puts pro-lifers in a tough spot, and I'm not sure we need to accept this as the only alternative," Earll said. "We need to call on the government to put more research effort into this before we invest our tax dollars into a vaccine that comes from a tainted source."

Of course these are the same people who oppose potentially life saving research on stem cells and cloning. Some think that eventually the religious right will have to make some hard choices about their stance on fetus research. As scientific research marches on, will potential medical pay offs out weigh moral opposition in the future?

sherman — Sun, 14 Oct 2001 15:28:54 -0800

It's not about anthrax, but this piece (by Hot Zone author Richard Preston) from the New Yorker a couple of years ago discusses smallpox, the reasons why we keep samples around instead of getting rid of it, how effective it would be if used as a biological weapon, how prepared we are, etc. etc. Also contains an interesting bit mentioning other threats of anthrax (and this was '99).