A century ago, a strain of pandemic flu killed up to 100 million people—5 percent of the world’s population. In 2013, a new mystery illness swept the western coast of North America, causing starfish to disintegrate. In 2015, a big-nosed Asian antelope known as the saiga lost two-thirds of its population—some 200,000 individuals—to what now looks to be a bacterial infection. But none of these devastating infections comes close to the destructive power of Bd—a singularly apocalyptic fungus that’s unrivaled in its ability not only to kill animals, but to delete entire species from existence.
Bd—Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in full—kills frogs and other amphibians by eating away at their skin and triggering fatal heart attacks. It’s often said that the fungus has caused the decline or extinction of 200 amphibian species, but that figure is almost two decades out-of-date. New figures, compiled by a team led by Ben Scheele from the Australian National University, are much worse.
Scheele’s team estimates that the fungus has caused the decline of 501 amphibian species—about 6.5 percent of the known total. Of these, 90 have been wiped out entirely. Another 124 have fallen by more than 90 percent, and their odds of recovery are slim. Never in recorded history has a single disease burned down so much of the tree of life. “It rewrote our understanding of what disease could do to wildlife,” Scheele says…
Posts Tagged ‘disease’
“Many a person will forget the past for a present”*…
… and many won’t, as Benjamin Errett explains…
… Do consider where many gifts end up: The fulskåp, defined in The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning as “a cupboard full of gifts you can’t stand to look at, and which are impossible to regift. Usually these are presents from distant aunts and uncles that you put on display when the giver comes to visit.”
The perfect gift for the person who has everything is either penicillin or a burglar alarm, as the old jokes have it. So there’s always the option of deliberately flubbing the gesture with a gag gift, which is what the British royal family reportedly does. Prince Harry once delighted the Queen with a shower cap that read “Ain’t life a bitch.”…
You shouldn’t have: “The Wit’s Guide to Gifts, ” from @benjaminerrett.
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As we wrap it up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that UNICEF (the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) was launched. Among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories, it provides immunizations and disease prevention, administers treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhances childhood and maternal nutrition, improves sanitation, promotes education, and provides emergency relief in response to disasters (most recently, e.g., the COVID epidemic and the invasion of the Ukraine).
“The world is bound in secret knots”*…
Everyone knows what a knot is. But knots have special significance in math and science because their properties can help unlock secrets hidden within topics ranging as widely as the biochemistry of DNA, the synthesis of new materials, and the geometry of three-dimensional spaces. In his podcast, The Joy of Wh(Y), the sensational Steven Strogatz explores the mysteries of knots with his fellow mathematicians Colin Adams and Lisa Piccirillo…
How do mathematicians distinguish different types of knots? How many different kinds of knots are there? And why do mathematicians and scientists care about knots anyway? Turns out, there’s lots of real-world applications for this branch of math, now called knot theory. It started out with the mystery of the chemical elements about 150 years ago, which were, at the time, thought to be different kinds of knots tied in the ether. Nowadays, knot theory is helping us understand how enzymes can disentangle strands of linked DNA. And also, knot theory has potential in basic research to create new kinds of medicines, including some chemotherapy drugs. But in math itself, knot theory is helping mathematicians work out the riddles of higher-dimensional spaces…
The study of knots unites the interests of researchers in fields from molecular biology to theoretical physics: “Untangling Why Knots Are Important,” from @stevenstrogatz in @QuantaMagazine. Listen here; read the transcript here.
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As we take stock of tangles, we might might send nicely-tied birthday greetings to a beneficiary and user of knot theory, Francis Collins; he was born on this date in 1950. A physician and geneticist, he discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases, led the Human Genome Project, and served as the director of the National Institutes of Health.
“Who is to say plutonium is more powerful than, say, rice?”*…
In the late 19th century, a mysterious illness plagued the upper reaches of Japanese society…
In 1877, Japan’s Meiji Emperor watched his aunt, the princess Kazu, die of a common malady: kakke. If her condition was typical, her legs would have swollen, and her speech slowed. Numbness and paralysis might have come next, along with twitching and vomiting. Death often resulted from heart failure.
The emperor had suffered from this same ailment, on-and-off, his whole life. In response, he poured money into research on the illness. It was a matter of survival: for the emperor, his family, and Japan’s ruling class. While most diseases ravage the poor and vulnerable, kakke afflicted the wealthy and powerful, especially city dwellers. This curious fact gave kakke its other name: Edo wazurai, the affliction of Edo (Edo being the old name for Tokyo). But for centuries, the culprit of kakke went unnoticed: fine, polished, white rice…
The fascinating tale of kakke, and of the determined doctor who found a cure: “How Killer Rice Crippled Tokyo and the Japanese Navy,” in @atlasobscura.
* N.K. Jemisin
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As we opt for brown rice, we might recall that it was on this date in 1937 that Marcel Boulestin became the first “television chef” when he hosted the first episode of the first TV cooking show, the BBC’s Cook’s Night Out. A successful chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, Boulestin helped popularize French cuisine in the English-speaking world (and was an important influence on Elizabeth David, and in turn, on Julia Child).
“I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes”*…
It turns out that, if you’re looking for them, the words “mosquitoes,” “fever,” “ague,” and “death” are repeated to the point of nausea throughout human history. (And before: … when the asteroid hit, dinosaurs were already in decline from mosquito-borne diseases.) Malaria laid waste to prehistoric Africa to such a degree that people evolved sickle-shaped red blood cells to survive it. The disease killed the ancient Greeks and Romans—as well as the peoples who tried to conquer them—by the hundreds of thousands, playing a major role in the outcomes of their wars. Hippocrates associated malaria’s late-summer surge with the Dog Star, calling the sickly time the “dog days of summer.” In 94 B.C., the Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote, “In the area south of the Yangtze the land is low and the climate humid; adult males die young.” In the third century, malaria epidemics helped drive people to a small, much persecuted faith that emphasized healing and care of the sick, propelling Christianity into a world-altering religion…
In total… mosquitoes have killed more people than any other single cause—fifty-two billion of us, nearly half of all humans who have ever lived. [They are] “our apex predator,” “the destroyer of worlds,” and “the ultimate agent of historical change.”…
They slaughtered our ancestors and derailed our history– and they’re not finished with us yet: “How Mosquitoes Changed Everything.”
* Leonard Cohen
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As we nestle under our nets, we might spare a thought for Girolamo Fracastoro; he died on this date in 1553. A physician, poet, and scholar of mathematics, geography, and astronomy, he he proposed (in 1546) that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable tiny particles or “spores” that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over long distances; he called these infectious agents fomes, from the Latin, meaning tinder. His theory was influential for three centuries, until it was sufficiently refined and extended to become modern germ theory, which superseded Fracastoro’s model.
Girolamo Fracastoro, by Titian c. 1528
“Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases”*…
The Toad Mountain harlequin frog is endangered and at risk from the Bd fungus
The story of an unprecedented pathogen: “The Worst Disease Ever Recorded.” (Lest one rest too easily because this threat seems to target not humans but animals at some distance on the tree of life, see here.)
* Hippocrates
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As we do our best to stave off extinctions, we might recall that on this date in 1981, Nature set the world’s record for “Longest Scientific Name” when it published the systematic name for the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the human mitochondria; it contains 16,569 nucleotide residues and is thus about 207,000 letters long.
The 16,569 bp long human mitochondrial genome with the protein-coding, ribosomal RNA, and transfer RNA genes
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