New views on deadly diseases
Harvard researchers are challenging the popular portrayal of the Ebola virus and other viral hemorrhagic fevers as emerging, highly rare, and deadly diseases that cannot be researched or understood using traditional epidemiological techniques. In a Nov. 9 paper in the journal Science, Harvard research scientist Stephen Gire and Pardis Sabeti, a Harvard associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, present new evidence that viral hemorrhagic fevers may actually be far more common — and perhaps much older — than previously thought. And while more outbreaks of such ailments, which include Lassa fever and the Marburg virus, may be identified when technology makes the diseases easier to diagnose, the researchers argue that the increase may not mean the diseases are spreading. “It is becoming clear that these diseases are more common than is perceived by the Western media, and that some are even endemic to certain parts of the world,” Sabeti said. “As...