February 2012

Recent furor around research on the H5N1 virus strain that has caused influenza in birds and rare cases of severe influenza in people may have died down for the time being after last week’s meeting of a group of experts assembled by the World Health Organization. They recommended that two different groups involved in what has come to be seen as controversial research should publish their findings in full. A halt on the bird flu research in question and publication of those data is still in place, however, and will likely last a few months longer.

To date, this H5N1 virus is not efficiently transmissible among humans – in fact, humans generally have been infected only after close contact with infected poultry. But virologist Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam manipulated the virus so that it became easily transmissible between ferrets via airborne droplets. (Ferrets are a useful standin for humans in influenza studies.) A team headed by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Madison-Wisconsin accomplished similar results: both papers were under review for publication by science journals before the controversy developed. More

We were pleased to see Lisa Rosner, PhD, in the Historical Medical Library here at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia the other day. Rosner, who is professor of history at Stockton College as well as an advisor to History of Vaccines, is the recipient of an NEH grant in the digital humanities to develop a role-playing game about early smallpox vaccination in Scotland. She was in the library finding great materials for the game, and we’re looking forward to playing it and promoting it when it’s completed. Keep an eye on her blog to read about the progress her team is making on the game. You can also follow her on Twitter to enjoy her musings on the history of medicine and her book The Anatomy Murders. The post below is reproduced from her blog with her permission.

Imagine a world in which there are no antibiotics, no routine medical checkups, no blood tests, and no sterile surgery. Imagine a world in which people are surrounded by deadly microbes, with no way to hold them in check. And now imagine that there exists one, and only one, proven vaccine: the vaccine for smallpox. The trouble is, that vaccine is very new and largely untested.

Now imagine that you live in Edinburgh in 1802. A young doctor in the city, Alexander Robertson, is trying to set up a vaccination dispensary, to protect people from the deadly smallpox virus while establish a paying medical practice. More