Infectious Diseases

Harvey Rubin is director of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response and a member of the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity We live in a world of pandemics, some potential and some quite real; both are unmistakably threats to national and international security. Whether or not avian influenza materializes as a human pandemic, the larger issue is global, and the solution must be global and enforceable. Here are some of the realities.

Lyme disease has reached epidemic proportions in Pennsylvania, particularly in the Southeastern region, which accounts for about 60 percent of the cases statewide. In 2003 and 2004, the state moved into the top spot in cases of Lyme disease, with 5,161 and 4,541 cases reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the CDC estimating that only one-tenth of the actual cases are reported, this would mean that we have about 45,000 unreported Lyme cases in the state each year.

It was all Jason Newland needed to hear: "I bet I can beat you. " That's what his friend Richard Aplenc had just said to him in Aplenc's office at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the second week of January. Newland, 31, a fellow in infectious diseases at the hospital, had noticed energy bars in the office and asked what was up. Aplenc, 39, an oncologist at the hospital, explained that he was training for the inaugural Philadelphia Triathlon in Fairmount Park. The event, to be held tomorrow, will benefit the hospital's oncology department and the Police Athletic League.

Patricia Green figured that she needed allies more than she needed her HIV medication during a six-month stint in a Philadelphia prison in 1998. So she opted not to take the medication and to keep her status a secret to everyone but the prison doctor. "Your interactions are hard enough in prison," Green, 39, of Northeast Philadelphia, told nearly 500 people at the sixth AIDS Care in the Minority Community Luncheon and Forum at the Doubletree Hotel in Philadelphia yesterday.

Finally, there is scientific proof to support my handshaking neurosis. A recent study by the American Society of Microbiology found that, though 95 percent of the men and women surveyed said they washed their hands after using a public restroom, observation studies show that only 67 percent of people actually do. Also, despite the commonly held belief that germs are spread through sneezing and coughing, the federal Centers for Disease Control reports...

Developments and advances on many scientific fronts were highlighted yesterday at the American Medical Association's 22d annual science reporters' conference in Philadelphia. Bio-terrorism was at the top of the agenda, in recognition of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. But topics as varied as Alzheimer's disease, infectious diseases, and the link between insomnia and anxiety were part of the first day of the two-day event, presented in association with Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Pennsylvania.

The global community is facing a crisis with a rapidly spreading disease far worse than Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. While SARS has infected more than 8,400 people and killed more than 800, tuberculosis sickens more than eight million people each year and kills more than two million. Sadly, many of these victims could be saved with antibiotics costing as little as $10. Even among people with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis treatment can prolong lives for years. Lacking financial resources, many African nations are at risk of social chaos as a wildfire of infectious diseases - led by AIDS, TB and malaria - consumes that continent.

Russell J. Stumacher, 60, of Wynnewood, an infectious-disease physician and educator, died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday at home. From 1975 until he retired in 2001, Dr. Stumacher was chief of infectious diseases and an epidemiologist at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia. He was also clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania for 22 years and taught at MCP-Hahnemann School of Medicine for three years. His son Roger said that although his father had encountered many interesting cases in his practice, including patients with Legionnaire's disease, he was especially proud of the hundreds of students, interns and residents he had taught.

When Johnson & Johnson paid $4.9 billion for Centocor Inc. in 1999, some Wall Street analysts were skeptical, saying the big drug company had overpaid for the Malvern biotechnology firm. But three years later, nobody doubts that the investment was a good deal for the pharmaceutical and health-care-products giant, with 198 operating companies in 54 countries, and for Centocor, which is flourishing. Sales of the crown jewel of Centocor - the rheumatoid-arthritis and Crohn's-disease medicine Remicade - have jumped 500 percent, from $200 million in 1999 to the $1.2 billion that is expected to be reported when Johnson & Johnson announces 2002 financial results tomorrow.

During the last decade of the 18th century, there were a number of yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia. Outbreaks of this dread disease occurred in 1793, 1797 and 1798, killing nearly 10,000 people, according to S.P. Wetherill's Philadelphia History (1916). City officials linked the epidemics to ships from foreign countries docking in the port of Philadelphia. The only way to deal with contagious diseases was to isolate victims. In 1799 the city government bought 10 acres in Essington on the Delaware to establish a quarantine station.