© ACE_CREATE/ISTOCKPHOTO.COMThese days, warnings of worldwide infection seem like monthly occurrences. And they’re not just in the popular press, but in scientific journals and in bulletins from public-health organizations. Think how many times in the last few years we have been told that a new global pandemic is at least possible, if not imminent—warnings fueled by reports of a newly emerging, particularly deadly virus, or a known pathogen accruing some dangerous new mutation. Think of the controversy that raged last year over whether to allow the publication of papers from two laboratories describing the experimental creation of mutated versions of the highly virulent but not easily spread H5N1 avian influenza virus—strains that were more transmissible between mammals. Warnings rang out about possible pandemics should the lab-mutated viruses accidently escape, and about terrorists using information gleaned from the scientific publications to create biological weapons.
This year’s flu season saw the arrival of yet another new and confounding influenza strain, H7N9, rare and so far not easily transmitted between humans, but especially deadly, at least at first glance. And, on May 12, as The Scientist goes to press, the World Health Organization issued a global alert about yet another highly virulent organism, this time a novel coronavirus—the same type of virus responsible for the SARS epidemic of 2002–2003—which first appeared in Saudi Arabia in September 2012 and is responsible to date for a total of 40 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection, including 20 deaths. When the infection was first reported, it stoked fears that the enormous number of Muslims gathered in Mecca for the annual October pilgrimage would be a ...
