Rachel &
In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F. Cantor

The mutant CCR5 could in fact, said O`Brien, be traced back to only seven hundred years ago. At that time a "historic strong selective event in- volving a pathogen that like HIV-1 utilizes CCR5" estab- lished an immunity in ancestral Caucasian populations." There is thus a genetic relationship between the Black Death and AIDS. If you are descended from a Caucasian who contracted the plague of the mid-fourteenth century and that ancestor survived, you may have complete immunity to HIV/AIDS. And it is believed that up to 15 percent of the Caucasian population could fall into this category.

Ring around the rosies A pocketful of posies Ashes, ashes We all fall down The meaning of the rhyme is that life is unimaginably beautiful - and the reality can be unbearably horrible.

"A speaker at the meeting warned that the healthcare system in the United States was not prepared for a bioterrorist attack, in which hundreds or thousands of people might flood hospitals, needing treat- ment for diseases: anthrax, plague, or smallpox, which most doctors in this country have never seen."

In the sixth month of the new millennium and new century, the American Medical Association held a conference on infectious diseases. Pronouncements by scientists and heads of medical organizations at the confer- ence were scary in tone. Infectious disease was the leading cause of death worldwide and the third leading cause in the U.S.A., it was stressed. The situation could soon become much worse. As the world becomes more of a global village, said one expert, infectious disease could by natural transmission be- come more threatening in the United States. Here monitoring is lax because of a mistaken belief that the threat of infectious disease has been almost wiped out by antibiotics.