Growing concern for health has fuelled interest in the relationship between diet and disease prevention. But despite the remarkable scientific advances, there are still many unanswered questions, and many evidence-based messages do not reach the population and are lost in a sea of misinformation and half-truths.
Colourblind people see colours differently because they do not have all the necessary information from the L, M and S cones. A simile would be to try to obtain different paint colours by mixing only two primary colours: we would never be able to obtain the full range of existing colours.
Maurice Hilleman is probably the scientist who has prevented the highest number of deaths and illnesses from infection in the history of medicine. He and his team obtained or improved more than 25 vaccines against viruses and bacteria.
Every historical period has had its epidemic executioner, and it has almost always been the ecological changes between human communities and the environment that have caused changes in pathogenicity and epidemic diseases.
The problem with the handling of COVID-19 in the United States has been more political than public health-related. When a country has a president who «didn’t know» and thought that «most people didn’t know» that the flu can kill people, what can be expected in terms of the handling of a pandemic?
Most probably, the current coronavirus1 pandemic represents the uncertain epilogue of an epidemiological period marked by the renewed prominence of the infectious disease in the last decades of the twentieth century
Next time we could be facing an even deadlier virus than SARS-CoV-2. Now is the perfect time to start working.
Knowing the detailed genomes of viruses and their phylogenies allows us to understand the origin of the outbreak. Was it a zoonosis from bats or were other hosts involved? Where did this fatal transition occur? What is the rate of change of the virus?
By giving away our DNA and genetic data, we are giving away the DNA and genetic data of our entire biological family. We have to think if the objective we are pursuing is worthwhile.
María Violeta Gómez Vicente, PhD in biochemistry and professor at the Department of Optics, Pharmacology, and Anatomy of the University of Alacant writes about the phenomenon of heterochromia.
