In The News

Harvard Business Review: Containing Ebola

Ranu S. Dhillon and Devabhaktuni Srikrishna November 20, 2018
Rebel attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo challenge the public health response to Ebola outbreaks in that country. Outbreaks can flare quickly, even without considering that conflict has contributed to displacement of more than 4.5 million people inside the country and hundreds of thousands fleeing to neighboring countries. “With over 10 major episodes of violence since the outbreak was...

New Scientist: People Across World Share Cancer Data

Andy Coghlan June 29, 2018
The Universal Cancer Databank allows people with cancer to donate their medical data to a global online database with the aim of finding treatments. “Unlike previous attempts to collect and share patient data, the UCD is a 100% philanthropic, 100% anonymised, and 100% global,” the database's site explains. “Its goal is to overcome rare and difficult cancers that have proven too difficult for...

Smithsonian: Globalization Changed How We Fight Disease

Daniel Fernandez June 5, 2018
Globalization has contributed both to spreading diseases quickly via travel and faster transportation systems and providing early warnings that lead to swift prevention mechanisms and treatments: “the rise of civilization – namely, the development of agriculture, animal husbandry and domesticated life – led to the growth of catastrophic illnesses such as smallpox, tuberculosis and polio,” writes...

CNN: Black Death Spread by Humans, Vindicating Rats

Meera Senthilingam January 17, 2018
“Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacteria, usually found in small mammals and their fleas,” reports the World Health Organization. “It is transmitted between animals through fleas. Humans can be infected through.” The Black Death pandemic occurring sporadically from the 14th to 19th centuries was not spread by rats, as once assumed, but through...

Spiegel Online: Monsanto Faces Blowback Over Cancer Claims

Philip Bethge November 7, 2017
A class-action lawsuit in the United States claims that the active ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, glyphosate, causes a form of lymph node cancer. “Monsanto's strategies for whitewashing glyphosate have been revealed in internal e-mails, presentations and memos,” reports Philip Bethge for Spiegel Online. The company’s argument: The chemical could not be described as a...

The New York Times: “It’s a Slow Death”: The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis

Shuaib Almosawa, Ben Hubbard and Troy Griggs September 20, 2017
Directors of UNICEF, WFP, and WHO visited Yemen in July and described the “world’s worst cholera outbreak in the midst of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.” Since the start of the conflict when the Houthis overthrew the government and gained control of Sana’a in 2014, Yemen has slowly collapsed. Frequent bombings have contributed to the deaths of more than 10,000 civilians and crippled the...

MIT Technology Review: Biological Teleporter Could Speed Outbreak Response

Brian Alexander August 2, 2017
Synthetic Genomics Inc. linked a group of machines, including a DNA printer and robots, to transmit digital code and print viruses. The digital-to-biological converter, working with pre-loaded chemicals, is reported to have manufactured DNA of the flu virus. “Though still a prototype, instruments like it could one day broadcast biological information from sites of a disease outbreak to vaccine...