[usc goose]

i don't know what the scope of your paper has to cover, but i think syphilis is another really fascinating disease. at times it has been cured by malaria, arsenic and mercury. it can kill you by making you crazy first or by giving you an aortic aneurysm. plus a lot of famous people had it.

 

[Dorito123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by usc goose /img/forum/go_quote.gif i don't know what the scope of your paper has to cover, but i think syphilis is another really fascinating disease. at times it has been cured by malaria, arsenic and mercury. it can kill you by making you crazy first or by giving you an aortic aneurysm. plus a lot of famous people had it.

<~~Clapping!

 

[Omega]

Syphilis is interesting for the famous people it has claimed.

MRSA (methicillin-resistant staph. aureus) and VRSA (vancomycin-resistant staph. aureus) are nasty, and a major health problem. VRSA in particular would make for an excellent report. Look up transposon 1546 (Tn1546) and staphylococcus aureus. Turns out staph. aureus is a highly adaptive pathogen; VRSA probably gained it's drug resistance by plasmid transfer in a woman who was harboring multiple infections at different locations of her body. She survived, miraculously.

Necrotizing fasciitis (ie, flesh-eating disease) gives me the willies. A person's flesh can literally be digested and rot off the body.

Polio is interesting because of the historical context, and also for the famous people who have suffered it.

If you choose to study MRSA or VRSA, I would even be willing to pass on some good references (PM me in this case). Spreading awareness about adaptive, drug-resistant pathogens is a good cause.

 

[Omega]

I forgot about another very interesting disease: tularemia. It is scary, very scary...not because it is super lethal or especially horrific, but because it is extremely infective, known to be weaponized (and mass-produced!) by the Soviet Union many years ago, and its deployment is virtually undetectable in a large population (versus a natural outbreak). It occaisonally springs up "in the wild" as it can live in grass and such. It has never been proven, but often suspected, that it was deployed against German soliders during the siege of Stalingrad.

 

[derekbmn]

What's worse than Ebola ?

 

[Omega]

Quote:

Originally Posted by derekbmn /img/forum/go_quote.gif What's worse than Ebola ?

Depends...worse for what?

Ebola is devastating to an individual, but the disease is probably too lethal to be the worst on a population level. For example, plague or influenza or many other pathogens are "worse" in that sense because a person lives long enough to transmit the pathogen to more people.

There are also economically devastating diseases, which can hit a segment of the population (for example, plague hit peasants the hardest because they lived in closest proximity to rats).

 

[Uncle Erik]

No, you're ALL wrong.

The worst disease is Upgraditis.

Can be spread by casual contact... even over the Internet. Scary stuff.

 

[GAD]

The Marburg (sp?) virus. Like Ebola, but less "popular".

GAD

 

[Lazarus Short]

The classic: Gas Gangrene.

 

[stewtheking]

Smallpox was pretty nasty.

 

[Al4x]

do a paper on the possibility of ebola combining with an airborne pathogen becoming as infectious as flu or something, that would be some nasty stuff!

 

[LostOne.TR]

flu/common cold, because it's always evolving?

maybe kind of weird in context of the other suggestions, but I do think the always evolving part puts it up there. And the most recent one, has been messing with my ears/hearing ! Doc says maybe close to a month of symptoms for me.

And man, from the posts I've read, those are some downright painful ones to come by.

 

[Al4x]

with ebola 1 in 10 people LIVE and you can suffer internal bleeding all over the place, fever, water loss etc, and it only takes a few days, it is not nice! but it is fascinating!

 

[acidbasement]

I vote for plague, not only for its fascinating history, but also because many people don't know that you can still catch it from certain populations of rodents.

 

[sandino]

I'd say rabies for completely messing up with the heads of the infected. Here in the Philippines, the patients are tied down (usually with just ripped blankets, in the more 'unfortunate' areas) with their mouths frothing.

If rabies is applicable to your paper it'd be pretty interesting since it's not elusive (and kinda, legendary) like ebola but is typically all around us. :/