A study by a New York hospital has found that doctors ties carry pathogens.
So do cell phones, pens and pagers.

However, a doctor’s tie tends to touch a patient and is changed less often than the traditional white coat.

The solution?
They can wear a bow tie, use a tie pin or follow the example of Israeli doctors who don’t wear ties.

Ebola
An outbreak of the hemorrhagic disease has been confirmed in the Sudan.
14 are infected and five are dead. Because of the location it has taken time to diagnosis and confirm. There is no cure.
A Russian lab worker at the Vektor State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology outside Novosibirsk in central Siberia also died from Ebola this week after a needle stick. Vektor is infamous for being known as a top biological weapons laboratory during the Soviet era.

SARS
The internet is helping medical personnel speed up information in the development of new vaccines.
Canada is playing a role in the first round of human testing of a SARS vaccine taking place in China.

“There’s been a number of vaccine initiatives – which were able to capitalize on the availability of the sequence and to come up with the proteins which would elicit an immune response.”

Experts around the world had predicted that it would take years to develop a SARS vaccine. Dr. Stephen Jones of Vancouver’s Genome Science Centre says the use of the internet is invaluable to connect researchers all over the world.

Jones said the internet and special open-source software have made the dissemination of SARS data possible. Without it, Jones said, it would have taken several months to write research papers, have them reviewed and made available in medical journals.

SARS killed over 800 people world wide, 44 in Canada.

Weather
The weather hasn’t been good in my neck of the woods, a fair bit of rain has caused flooding and a state of emergency was declared just north of here with roads and washouts causing problems.
But it is tame compared to the tornados in the US and Southern Canada.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic are reporting over 200 deaths after heavy rains caused mudslides. Whole villages are gone, and a mass grave is being considered by the Dominican Republic government. Up to 8 inches of rain have fallen the past few days.

West Nile
I’ve heard theories before about seeding of the West Nile virus in North America being deliberate. This theory is the latest.
I’m not prepared to go there. Mosquitoes feed off any animal or bird which travel great distances. Other things factor in like weather, mutation and adaptability.
The West Nile virus has possibly been around a great deal longer than we give it credit for. Whether this latest conspiracy theory has merit, one thing we do well to remember is how interconnected people and other species are on this planet.