h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi there mikey!

you're about the first microbiologist i've met at h2g2 (besides me, but i don't count)!

i see that you're doing a university project on zoonotic diseases. may i suggest one? you probably haven't heard of it, but the pathogen is one of the 'newest' around - nipah virus. yeah, the pig disease thing. i even have material on it, and i know *both* the scientists who were responsible for identifying it, so if you'd like me on board as a volunteer

oh yeah, and the pathology is incredibly gross... the brain pretty much goes mushy...

*sigh* I _was_ doing an uni project on zoonotic diseases. I got disbanded, as I was going too slowly, and someone preempted two of my more important entries. So we went ahead and submitted the finished ones to PR. Too bad. When I was doing my microbiology degree, I did my internship in zoonosis control. Rabies, lots of rabies. Little bit of hantavirus, an ebola flap, the occasional plague case, but lots and lots of rabies. I have a sick and twisted mind, I tell you.

you want sick? for my honours project i did salmonella typhi - these nasty fatal strains from papua new guinea! we were *totally* nervous about handling them in the beginning (we felt that there was no more undignified way to die than to die of the sort of food poisoning that gives you bad diarrhoea)... and then one day we saw our supervisor handling plates of e. coli o157:h7 (!!!) with bare hands, and leave a vial of fatal s. typhi right next to her cup of coffee on her computer table (!!!) . it's still a joke between me and my lab partner, i tell you.

maybe we could start a project on emerging and re-emerging diseases? only i don't know many people besides zaphod who are familiar with diseases and stuff...

Oh there's lots of us around, you'd be surprised...

oh? perhaps you could tell me where to look... i've got some ideas brewing