pathogen
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What Ever Happened to Mad Cow?
One of the most existentially frightening illnesses ever to be discovered was mad cow disease, a fatal prion-spread illness that appeared in animals in the 1980s and killed over 200 people during the height of the outbreak in the late 1990s. You don’t hear much about mad cow today, but the threat still looms. Here’s…
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The Ominous Link Between Rare Disease Outbreaks in 2023
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. A 16-month-old boy was playing in a splash pad at a country club in Little Rock, Arkansas, this summer when water containing a very rare and deadly brain-eating amoeba went up his nose. He died a few days later in the…
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Two Scary Deer Illnesses Are Spreading in the U.S.
It’s a perilous time right now for deer in America. On Monday, Minnesota officials enacted an emergency order to stop the local travel and importation of farmed deer, in hopes of slowing down the spread of a universally fatal prion disease among wild deer. Meanwhile, in Vermont, wildlife officials today announced the first known case…
