Word: influenza
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Antibiotics like penicillin and tetracycline are mixed into animal feed for similar reasons. The low doses enhance growth and ward off ailments such as influenza and intestinal diseases, which are caused by the overcrowding and confinement common to factory farming. About half of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. today are fed to farm animals...
...dealt with large scale public health campaigns before. In the 1970s, during a severe influenza outbreak, UHS organized a massive inoculation effort. "It was planned for months. There was a cast of thousands. We administered 10,000 shots in three days," Postel says...
...they don't get it in time, there's a risk of an influenza epidemic" among older people, he said...
Building on Pasteur's work, 20th century scientists have learned to mass- produce bacteria and viruses, then weaken or kill them and use them as the major ingredient in vaccines for such varied diseases as typhus, yellow fever, influenza, polio, measles and rubella. Unfortunately, the vaccines occasionally cause the disease they are designed to ward off. (Reason: the "killed" viruses sometimes survive, while the weakened versions often fail to cause an immune response.) In general, however, the vaccines have been quite effective; in recent years the National Academy of Sciences has reported only a handful of polio and diphtheria cases...
Long the victims of bigotry, some Aborigines have even expressed fears that the government's neglect is a subtle form of genocide. Such suspicions are rooted in history: in the early 1800s, white settlers massacred Aborigines, sometimes shooting them for sport. The Aborigine population, plagued by cholera and influenza, fell from more than 300,000 in the late 18th century to about 170,000 today. At a science conference in Queensland two weeks ago, Historian Gwen Deemal-Hall alleged that the state government was injecting young Aboriginal women with a contraceptive drug to slow the growth of the indigenous population...