Eight years ago Tom Curtis reported that AIDS could have been spread by an experimental polio vaccine grown on monkey kidneys. Scientists sniffed. Journalists scoffed. The story died. Now, a new book says the theory wasn't so stupid after all.
A swine flu pandemic isn't a "foregone conclusion," according to the new alert level issued yesterday by the World Health Organization. But things are starting to get a little scary. Cue the travel warnings. The United States said not to head south of the border. The European Union said stay away from the United States. Anyone flying from North America to Hong Kong will have his temperature taken upon arrival. While the death toll in Mexico is up to 152, nobody has yet died stateside.
[Update: Now with the Loco Gringos' "Nurture My Pig" and Houston's own Flying Fish Sailors' "Flu Pandemic."]
April is almost over and we're coming into Sweeps Week, when commercial sponsors look at TV ratings to decide where they're going to advertise, and you know what that means: time for another media-generated mass panic.
This time they've taken a cue from 1976 and the boys from Fort Dix - now tell me that unintentional rhyme ain't a Kinky Friedman song waiting to happen - and are providing
Working overtime to give natural selection the finger, a former member of the Texas medical Association's Committee on Infectious Diseases has issued a press release telling people how to wash their hands. "I'm not just talking about running your hands under the faucet," Gary N. Butka states in the release. "It means getting a bar of soap and washing your hands. Hum to yourself a tune, maybe 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' or 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' and when y
Unlike in 1918, when the flu really bitch-slapped humanity, leading medical experts have the ability to immediately update us with information on how to stay safe, and how to separate myth from fact. For example: By now, unless you're a vapid hotel-fortune heiress who answers the cell phone during sex, you know that you can't get this brand of cooties from eating pork; there are, however, some rather interesting questions among the scores of FAQs lists that have popped up in the last few days.We
The World Health Organization has declared swine flu to be a pandemic, the first in over 40 years.It's doing it mostly on the basis of a sharp growth in cases in Australia, Japan and Chile, but just about every story on the subject -- at least in America -- mentions Houston.We were, of course, the first American city to have a swine-flu death; we also had Travis Elementary close after a bunch of kids came down with stuff, some of which included swine flu.But all that seems to have calmed down la
