Zap*Germs

Vaccines against rotavirus, the maincause of severe diarrhea in preschoolers, may win recommendationfor global use by the World Health Organization (WHO). About 527,000 young children die from ro...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2008/11/vaccines-to-fight-rotavirus-diarrhea.html

In the past couple of years, CA-MRSA has fully infiltrated itself into the US community, which I remarked on back in April 2005. As a new MSNBC article states, MRSA skin infections are often mist...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/08/community-acquired-mrsa-now-widespread.html

By the time Herskovitz got to the emergency room at Carroll Hospital Center , the swelling had moved up to his knee and his leg had turned dark. The former body builder still didn't know what wa...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/07/flesh-eating-bacteria-attack-baltimore.html

Apparently "50 tons of red gunk...rained on India in 2001. It's possible that the stuff contains critters from outer space," sez Boing Boing.

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/05/alien-microbes-in-crimson-rain.html

Like something out of "Aliens," excruciatingly painful skin lesions extrude a mysterious, fibrous material -- in different colors. One sufferer finally took his life to end the agony. And some do...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/05/morgellons-disease-painful-infection.html

The antibacterial ingredient triclosan -- now added to nearly everything, from hand soap to toothpaste and cloth -- has been found to survive processing in water-treatment plants. It's also been ...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/05/triclosan-antibacterial-additive.html

From today's WaPo, some additional detail on the scary situation for contact-lens wearers. Apparently many users are "confused and concerned. Eye doctors report a surge in calls from users of Bau...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/update-on-renu-and-fusarium-risk.html

You're not just imagining it, CFS sufferers, and it's not just a hard-to-identify infection. The results of a study on a group of people in Wichita, Kansas with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has prove...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-has-genetic.html

The mumps virus outbreak has afflicted over 1,100 in Iowa and other midwestern states, and will likely spread as college student end the academic year and travel around the country. So says the C...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/us-mumps-epidemic-continues.html

Many US farmers maintain a manure lagoon, filled with cow manure to which water is added. The mixture is mixed and then sprayed on crop fields as fertilizer. Great way to recycle cow pies, but so...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/killing-bacteria-in-manure-reduces.html

There's a lot wrong with the MSM, but when they do their job well, it's only right to applaud their efforts. One of the bright spots in the Hurricane Katrina mess was the truly indefatigable effo...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/unstoppable-katrina-coverage-wins-two.html

From Sunday's WaPo:President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific tasks for federal agencies, including determining ...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/us-government-pandemic-flu-plan-ready.html

A new book, sold only at Amazon.com and titled The Natural Bird Flu Cure "They" Don't Want You To Know About, has reached a ranking of 3,713 today! I haven't read it yet, but it appears to rely o...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/natural-pandemic-bird-flu-remedy.html

Update 13 Apr 06: Thanks to the rapid transmission of news today, companies must react immediately to negative developments. Bausch & Lomb has done that by telling stores to remove their ReNu bra...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/fusarium-eye-fungus-infections-in.html

Don't be left behind in the bird-flu panic! Show your fear (pretend it's just ironic postmodern ennui) -- or just clue others in to H5N1 -- with cool shirts, hats and buttons from H5N1 Wear!

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/trendy-h5n1-apparel-be-bird-flu.html

Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Washington used supercomputers to model the rapid spread throughout the United States of a hypothetical, mutated form of bi...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/if-bird-flu-pandemic-comes-imperfect.html

Only cleaners with bleach appear to kill active Clostridium difficile (c-diff) bacteria, plus their spores. In fact, the use of non-bleach-containing cleaners actually seems to encourage the bact...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/cleaners-without-bleach-make-c-diff.html

Will felines someday take the place of attorneys in Shakespeare's famous statement? If a full-blown, human-transmissible bird-flu epidemic ever does come about, well, putting down Fluffy may mean...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/first-thing-we-do-lets-kill-all-cats.html

Will antibiotic-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii become the next MRSA? It's been killing hospital patients in the UK and France, and causing problems in US military hospitals. Now it's showing u...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/multidrug-resistant-acinetobacter-on.html

Update 04 Apr 2006: Less than two days after I posted this article, discussion of Dr. Pianka's recent utterances can be found filling the talk-radio waves and the blogosphere. There's a thoughtfu...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/doctor-doom-pianka-calls-for-billions.html

How might quantum physics and the bird-flu epidemic be alike? Well, quantum theory posits that "by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality." This bizarre phenomenon is...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/04/are-photo-journalists-spreading-bird.html

Update 15 Apr 2006: The mumps epidemic is spreading throughout the US Midwest.-------------------------"We are calling this an epidemic," said Iowa state epidemiologist Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, exp...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/03/mumps-outbreak-another-reason-to.html

Retailer John Wanamaker famously lamented, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." His dilemma -- measuring ad-campaign results -- continues to...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/03/new-bird-flu-vaccine-protects-which.html

If you pick up an infection during your hospital stay, expect your bill to be an astonishing 750 percent higher than if you had stayed germ-free. That's what the state of Pennsylvania found in st...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/03/hospital-acquired-infections-bottom.html

WaPo takes a look at some consumer products designed to help us spot and kill germs at the daily-life level -- things like toothbrush sanitizers and food-freshness strips. These products were rec...

http://zapgerms.blogspot.com/2006/03/stressed-over-germs-housewares.html