November 09, 2005 News & Views » Cover

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Chicken Little! Chicken Little! 

You think your Avian Flu is bad -- here's ten more pandemics threatening to bring down the sky

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It would be naïve to assume there is just one disease in this great big world of pathogens looking to infect you, so why would you think there's just one larvae worm? One of the more disgusting (as well as one of the most stubborn) diseases is Guinea worm disease. It begins as larvae before growing into worms inside the body. Eventually, the worms emerge after boring holes through the skin, most commonly the tops of the victim's feet. Sudanese with the disease sometimes tie twigs to the worm, hoping that will speed its exit, or at least keep the worm from going back in to look for another exit. There are no drugs to treat Guinea worm disease, just prayer and not living in a third world country.

--Karen Shugart

Lockjaw

Your mom was right. If you make that face, it will get stuck that way. Well, she was sort of right, because if you make that face without having lockjaw, you'll be fine, and you've probably just made a hilarious face that has entertained all your friends, rewarding you with instant popularity.

The toxin that causes lockjaw prevents muscles from relaxing, and once a muscle has been stimulated to contract, it cannot return to its original relaxed state. Most of us are treated for lockjaw preventatively every few years or so in the form of a tetanus shot. Tetanus is the less fun, modern name for the microbe Clostridium tetani. You can get lockjaw from cutting yourself on a rusty fence or from an untreated puncture wound. Thus, prison escapees and veterans of the Franco-Prussian War should beware.

Other than a deformed, hideous jaw, untreated tetanus will give you a stiff gait and rigid extremities (Frankensteinism), and oddly, a sensitivity to noise. Inability to eat food is also listed as a symptom, but that much should be obvious because you can't open your mouth, traditionally the hole food goes into. Humans are one of two species most prone to contract lockjaw. So if you are thinking about switching species because of lockjaw fear, do not pick the horse. It is the only organism on the planet more likely to have it than us. Our gravest threat to a lockjaw pandemic is if in our next war we decide to go retro, trading in bombs and rockets for lances, pikes, and halbeards.

--Jared Neumark

Consumption

Unlike these other foreboding diseases, the danger of consumption lies not in the pathology, but in the synonymity. Ordinary bacterium has taken the credit far too long when it comes to mutation, trudging along the road to adaptation while taking millions of generations before a mutant strain finally develops. So pop all the antibiotics you can find; you don't have to worry about evolving bacteria and viruses killing us anymore. We'll be gone before then. But consumption can mutate faster than you can say streptococcus.

Old-timey consumption (a.k.a. tuberculosis) is named for how it appears to consume a person from the inside. In the olden days, it also consumed the urban poor, causing one in every four deaths in England in the early 19th century. In the US, the disease led to a ban on public spitting, which was permitted only in spittoons.

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It was once commonly believed the first person in a community who came down with the disease was a vampire, having contracted the illness preying on the blood of relatives. A consumptive had vampire-like symptoms: swollen eyes sensitive to light, exceptionally pale skin and a bloody cough. After coughing up the blood, it was believed the consumptive/vampire had to seek more blood. As a preventative measure against the spread of vampirism, the community often dug up the deceased's body, opened the chest and burned the heart or the whole body. Vampires or not, consumption inflects one-third of the world's population, claiming two million lives per year.

That's before it mutates into over-consumption. Take alcohol consumption: it can lead to drunk driving, drunk walking, stabbings and dreadful, crippling cases of the room spinnies. Sixty-eight percent of manslaughters, 48 percent of robberies, and 42 percent of rapes are alcohol-consumption related. Even worse, boozing has historically been linked to cussing, and in some extreme cases has lowered inhibitions, leading to excessive jigging and stolen smooches.

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