Nathan Wolfe: Stopping Superbugs February 11, 2008

Current global disease control efforts focus largely on attempting to stop pandemics after they have already emerged. UCLA Epidemiologist Nathan Wolfe combines methods from molecular virology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to understand viral infections (such as HIV and Ebola) at their source--human-animal contact--and how they go on to become pandemics. Working with subsistence hunters in Cameroon, Wolf has traced the presence of previously unknown simian viruses in humans. His research has the potential to predict where such viral pandemics will arise, bringing us closer to being able to eliminate such new diseases from the get-go.