I AM FUCKING SCARED!!!!

[Justin W. Moore]

On 31 Oct 1994, RYBICKI, ED wrote:

> Hey, don't SHOUT so, man...!  But thank you on behalf of my 
> medical comrades.  And I think he (the Hot Zone author) overdid it a 
> bit - it is a zoonotic disease (ie: of animals) and doesn't get into 
> humans that often.  There are a number of almost equally bad ones 
> around - Congo-Crimean haemorrhagic fever is just one of them. And 
> it is endemic near where I live, and I'm not worried about it - 
> doesn't get into the human population that often, is why.
> 

True.....but it does a good job in showing mankind that a species 
threatening virus, bacterium, etc. is not an impossiblity.  I'm taking a 
virology course right now and I think I'm finding out we more about how 
much we DON'T know, than how much we DO!!!!!

Preston adds theatrics now doubt.....but the basic message is a useful 
to pull something out of the strictly academic and bring it into public
knowledge!  Most folks have no idea that there are "lifeforms" out in 
Nature that have such destructive potential........besides the usual 
history we all learn in school about the Black Plague and Polio....etc.

Point is, and I agree with a recent Time magazine article, that despite 
recent medical advances and the boasts of some in the medical community a 
few years back (about winning the battle of infectious disease) we still have
a lot to learn..........

The Hantavirus outbreak in the U.S. last year and the continual discovery 
of new, and sometimes lethal, viruses in the tropics should make everyone 
pay close attention to the world around us.......

-- Justin Moore