Scientists Sequence Black Death Bacteria 265
First time accepted submitter Quince alPillan writes "The bacteria behind the Black Death has a very unusual history. Its ancestor is an unassuming soil bacterium and the current strains of Yersinia pestis still infects thousands of people annually, but no longer causes the suite of horrifying symptoms associated with the medieval plagues. The radical differences, in fact, had led some to suggest that we had been blaming the wrong bacteria. Now, researchers have obtained DNA from some of London's plague victims, and confirmed that Y. pestis appears to be to blame. But the sequences also suggest that the strains of bacteria we see today may be different from the ones that rampaged through Europe."
The Black Death isn't coming back (Score:5, Informative)
the Black Death was ugly. Imagine half the population of your entire city or town dying off in 1 or 2 years. Nasty business that.
But, that said, people really should take a more reasoned approach to disease alarmism these days. All this "This latest pandemic is going to kill us ALL!!" Chicken Little shit gets tiresome. The Littles always cite the Black Death and 1918 pandemic [wikipedia.org] as if that's what we could expect from a pandemic today--all without noting the MASSIVE improvements in sanitation, medical science, vaccine research, etc. that make this scale of pandemic highly unlikely in the modern era.
The Black Death could have been stopped in its tracks if those 14th-century peasants had even an inkling of the basic medical/sanitation knowledge that even the biggest idiots among us know today. Basic stuff like "Wash your hands regularly," "Cover your mouth when you cough," and "Don't let your goddamned flea-infested farm animals wander around through your living area, moron" are surprisingly recent bits of common sense that the developed world today takes for granted. Of course, there are still some third-world shitholes where people think that a witch-doctor rubbing feces on an open wound will ward off the evil spirits. But even those places usually have a FEW among them with some basic sense (and soap).
Re:The Black Death isn't coming back (Score:5, Informative)
There is a legitimate point to considering the technological ability to both communicate more rapidly about a highly infectious disease and approach a new and lethal strain with modern decontamination and medical systems. That doesn't rule out the possibility of certain very specialized and nasty toxins such as Bacillus anthracis and other hybrid biological weapons. The real danger is in a strain of bacteria that can infect a host, cause relatively mild and temporary symptoms, then reinfect and spread after a period of time leading to a lethal toxicity in the effected patient and the people they have probably come into contact with. Obviously, the really virulent diseases like Ebola Zaire are so nasty that they burn themselves out fairly rapidly because the infected population dies before they can spread the virus. As our knowledge of DNA sequencing and protein structures increases though, we start to arrive at a set of tools that could lead to truly frightening weapons and bacterial/viral hybrids. Diseases that can switch on and off based on environmental triggers. Or how about a bacteria that multiplies rapidly and uncontrollably under a certain PSI of air pressure in one's lungs?