How to stop the next epidemic

check out this great WIRED magazine article on the research of a UCLA biologist, Nathan Wolfe, who is investigating methods to determine unknown viruses in humans before they can start spreading. excerpt:

We do know that it takes three steps for a zoonotic agent to become an HIV or a smallpox. First, a human must be exposed to the virus. Then, the virus must either be virulent or become so through mutation. Finally the virus must be able to move from human to human and not kill its host so quickly that it doesn't have time to spread. Each of these steps is a complex biological process, and each presents opportunities to ward off a pandemic. Traditionally, however, the study of infectious disease has focused on containing and tracing outbreaks — say, Ebola in Africa, or HIV around the globe — after a zoonosis has started spreading. (Occasionally, as with avian flu, scientists have identified a potentially dangerous virus one stage before human-to-human transmission.) When it comes to searching for new or unknown viruses among wild animals — and discovering the process through which they cross to humans — few scientists have ventured into the forest.

That's what Wolfe hopes to change. His group is organizing a vast range of field research in Cameroon: collecting blood from hunters and their kills, testing wild and domestic birds for avian flu, conducting anthropological surveys of hunters' habits, and investigating sudden die-offs of primates in the jungle. The combined effort is a year-round operation, employing more than 30 full-time scientists, technicians, veteri narians, and IT specialists. Wolfe's group collaborates with dozens more worldwide, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the virology lab at France's University of Montpellier.

WIRED article

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