Mad Cow: it's here!

Talked to U of C's Dr. James Mastrianni, one of only two doctors in the country who works with living patients with Creutzfeld-Jakobs Disease (the human version of mad cow.) Prions, which are mysterious misfolded proteins that cause CJD--they're neither bacteria nor viruses, and no one knows very much about them at all--have to be contained in a level 3 Biohazard Safety Lab. What's that involve? Check it out!

Swine flu...in Chicago

5 cases of unconfirmed swine flu in Chicago. Two of them are staff at the U of C hospitals.

The reason why it takes so long to ID swine flu is that there are no local centers for testing - the Centers for Disease Control have to do them out of their labs in Atlanta.

I've talked to a couple of University researchers about the flu. One of them studied (for kicks, apparently) the path of the 1918 flu pandemic in Chicago and U of C in particular - turns out we were hosting a garrison of WWI soldiers at the time. Here they at left, drilling on Stagg Field, the U of C's old Big Ten football stadium (with no little irony, where our library is now.)


Read about what happened to these guys here!