People are going whole-hog bananas today over a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, in which gay men arriving at hospitals and clinics in San Francisco and Boston were showing high incidences of truly nasty drug-resistant staph infections. Let's panic! After all, Matt Drudge is teasing the story with an invented quote: "STRAIN OF SUPERBUG 'MAY BE NEW HIV'..." But that language doesn't actually appear anywhere, much less in the Reuters summary to which he links; it does not even appear in this story that uses that phrase as a headline. Mmm, fake horror! The study began sampling patients four years ago. If this was the new super-plague, we'd all be neck-deep in boils already.

• disease
• hiv
• panic

Design Observer has a suggested alert system for the avian flu.

• bird flu
• design
• disease

People, especially Americans, are so well-fed and taken care of prenatally and from 0-2 years of age that the population is growing taller, getting heavier, living longer, and is much less likely to suffer from chronic diseases.

• disease
• health
• obesity
• population
• science

Underground culture watch: "bug chasers" are men who are actively looking to get infected with AIDS, or "initiated into the brotherhood".

Update: When the RS article came out three years ago, it was taken apart by Andrew Sullivan in Salon and by Dan Savage. (thx jonathan, steven, scott, and tycho)

• AIDS
• disease

Even though avian flu is under control in some areas of Southeast Asia, Indonesia "has witnessed more bird flu deaths than any other country in 2006".

• asia
• avianflu
• disease
• indonesia

Through vaccination and vigilance, the avian flu is under control in the Southeast Asian countries that were hardest hit with the disease. See also this map of avian flu reports.

• asia
• avianflu
• disease
• epidemic

Blog about the small village of Nata in Botswana that's documenting the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS there.

• Africa
• AIDS
• disease
• medicine
• weblogs

Scientists have found a probable carrier for the ebola virus: fruit bats. According to the WHO, ebola causes death in "50-90% of all clinically ill cases".

• disease
• ebola
• medicine
• science

Nice overview of what you need to be worried about regarding the bird flu. Right now for your typical non-bird-handling person? Nothing much to worry about.

• avianflu
• disease

Two of the biggest pessimists in the business, Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil, outline their case for not releasing the genome for the 1918 influenza virus. "The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous."

• billjoy
• disease
• genetics
• raykurzweil
• science
• terrorism
• wmd

Flu Wiki has lots of information on the avian (bird) flu.

• avianflu
• disease
• epidemic

Bats may be the source of SARS. "Researchers found a virus closely related to the Sars coronavirus in bats from three regions of China".

• China
• disease
• sars
• science