News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A Saskatchewan man who died earlier this summer was Canada's first victim of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), but he probably acquired the disease in the United Kingdom, Canadian health officials announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A British woman living in Florida has what appears to be the first case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) reported in a US resident, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella that emerged as a common pathogen in the mid-1990s was present in the United States as early as 1985, according to a report from the CDC.

(CIDRAP News) – It is 13 days since the emergence of a hypothetical smallpox epidemic caused by the release of virus in three US shopping malls. Some 16,000 cases have been reported, 1,000 people have died, and the nation is running out of vaccine. Hospitals are overflowing, and federal and state officials are at odds over how to contain the epidemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Data on more than 300,000 proteins that may have potential as treatments for anthrax—the fruits of a project in which thousands of personal computers were used to analyze billions of molecules—have been turned over to the US and United Kingdom governments.

Note: This story was updated March 1, 2002, to include additional information about recent federal actions to prevent mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has set up a new Web site to help food scientists develop and use mathematical models to predict how pathogenic bacteria in food will behave under varying environmental conditions.

(CIDRAP News) – British and American scientists have teamed up with several technology corporations in seeking to enlist personal-computer (PC) owners from around the world in the hunt for a molecule that can keep the anthrax toxin out of human cells.