Word: bacteria
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...cheaply produced tablet free from serious side-effects, dapsone has become the world's chief method of combating leprosy. Although the bacteria causing HD display increasing signs of developing resistance to the drug, dapsone remains an effective means of arresting the illness when a patient suffers from the pure-tuberculoid strain, a less-severe type of HD. Victims with this form of illness can usually expect to lead perfectly normal lives without any of the scars and deformities ordinarily associated with leprosy, if doctors diagnose the condition at an early stage...
...relaxation of the penal atmosphere at Carville only occurred in the 1960s when research finally changed physicians' attitudes about the communicability of HD. Doctors now believe that a person must have a genetic susceptibility to the bacteria which causes the illness before exposure will result in infection. Although constant contact in close quarters may increase the statistical probability of eventually contracting the disease to around ten per cent, those in occasional contact run virtually no risk whatsoever...
What makes people sick? Medical science believes that little things-parasites, bacteria and viruses-are the villains. Psychiatry suggests that people sometimes make themselves, or, more probably, imagine themselves to be ill Richard Totman, an Oxford University psychologist, offers another explanation He holds society responsible. Drawing upon empirical and anecdotal evidence he argues that many apparently "physical" illnesses-including ulcers, hypertension and heart disease, as well as cancer and the state of mental deterioration known as senility-are the products of an individual's inability to behave as the world expects him to. "The risk of be coming seriously...
...only a starting point. After extracting messenger RNAs from human white blood cells, which were producing interferon, they used these molecules to generate sections of DNA that they hoped would include the required gene. They then spliced these fragments into the genes of a laboratory strain of E. coli bacteria. The bacteria began to make copies, or clones, of their altered selves...
Eventually, the team produced some 20,000 clones. But which ones carried the crucial interferon DNA? Analyzing them in successively smaller groups-first 500 at a time, then 64, then eight-the scientists isolated their genetic needle in the haystack: the bacteria that carried the DNA for interferon. After they found one such bug, they could easily identify others and extract the DNA fragments. The team spliced them into different places in E. coli, and, presto, the bacteria began cranking out a close facsimile of the human protein...