It’s been a big month for gene therapy: first a breakthrough for leukaemia last week, now today scientists announced they’ve successfully treated kids with “bubble boy” disease.
Malaria kills almost a million people every year and makes another 250 million people very, very sick. Soon we may be able to instantly cure the scourge the same way you heat up your sad, frozen dinner-for-one.
Indonesians are heading to railroad tracks seeking electric therapy for their chronic ailments. This idea comes from the tale of a paralysed Chinese man who went to the tracks to commit suicide and was miraculously cured.
It’s been almost 10 years since the anthrax attacks which killed five people and infected 17 others, but finally we have a legit way to detect the spores — and potentially dozens more pathogens like salmonella.
There’s a terrible hereditary eye disease called Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy that affects men in their 20s. It’s a mitochondrial disease inherited from your mother that leads to total blindness within six months of onset.
The thing about the flu is that there’s a lot of different strains. One flu season is different from the other and each one requires a new shot. That could change! Doctors believe we’ll develop a universal vaccine soon enough.
The widespread sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea used to be easy to treat, but not anymore. For the first time, scientists have identified a strain of this bacteria in Japan that is resistant to all known antibiotics.
You may not know what rinderpest was. But if you knew that this cattle killer was believed to have been a biblical plague and helped bring down the Roman Empire, you’d cheer that we wiped it off the face of the Earth.
