Maryn McKenna

Journalist and Author

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2012 In The Rear-View Mirror: What You Liked

January 1, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment


Happy New Year, constant readers. For the second year in a row, here’s my list of which of my posts (91 in 2012!) most moved you to react. Last year (find that list here), I counted down based on which posts provoked the most comments. This year, Wired installed a tweet-counter — which registers only if someone clicks through from Twitter, but not if the post’s URL is mentioned or RT’d — so I thought it would be amusing to score posts that way this year.

And the verdict is: You care enormously about food policy, but you continue to be fascinated by the emergence of scary diseases — and, to my surprise and pleasure, you care about public understanding of science as well.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, antibiotics, chagas, chicken, diabetes, FDA, NRDC, poultry, Resistance, Science Blogs, shrimp, TB

Chagas Disease: Poverty, Immigration, and the 'New HIV/AIDS'

May 30, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

What if a deadly epidemic was burgeoning and almost nobody noticed?

In the latest issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, a distinguished group of virologists, epidemiologists and infectious-disease specialists say that’s not a hypothetical question. They argue that Chagas disease, a parasitic infection transmitted by blood-sucking insects, has become so widespread and serious — while remaining largely unrecognized — that it deserves to be considered a public health emergency. Extending the metaphor, they liken Chagas’ stealth spread to the early days of AIDS:

Both diseases are health disparities, disproportionately affecting people living in poverty. Both are chronic conditions requiring prolonged treatment courses…  As with patients in the first two decades of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, most patients with Chagas disease do not have access to health care facilities. Both diseases are also highly stigmatizing, a feature that for Chagas disease further complicates access to … essential medicines, as well as access to serodiagnosis and medical counseling.

That sounds like rhetoric — after all, what disease expert doesn’t think his or her disease is vitally important — but the numbers the experts bring to the argument are stunning. Overall, there are believed to be 10 million people living with Chagas infection; most of them are in Central and South America, but there are an estimated 1 million in the United States. Up to one-third of those infected, 3 million, are at risk of Chagas’ worst complications, enlarged heart and heart failure. And wherever blood donations are not tested for the protozoan, the blood supply — as well as organ transplants — are at risk.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: borders, chagas, HIV, Science Blogs, Texas

Sleeping With The Enemy: What You Get From Your Pet

December 12, 2011 By Maryn Leave a Comment

The most numerous and passionate comments I’ve ever gotten here were responses — OK, vituperation and denunciations — to a post describing how a Pacific Northwest family caught plague from their dogs’ fleas.

So I’ll be over in the corner donning a flame-resistant bio-suit — because  it turns out that, when it comes to pets on the bed, plague is not the only health risk. It’s one of many, along with hookworm, roundworm, MRSA, rabies, Chagas disease, Pasteurella, cat scratch fever, Capnocytophaga, Cryptosporidium and Cheyletiella. Oh, and bites.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: cats, chagas, dogs, MRSA, pets, rabies, Science Blogs, zoonotic

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