Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Kirsten Sanford
Vincent, Alan, Rich, and special guest Dr. Kirsten Sanford talk about her career in science media, then consider whether smallpox eradication led to the AIDS pandemic, high fidelity RNA synthesis, and a new Ebola virus vaccine.
This episode is sponsored by Data Robotics Inc.
Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #83 (66 MB .mp3, 91 minutes)
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Links for this episode:
- Does smallpox vaccine protect against HIV? (thanks, Srinivas; Washington Post and BMC Immunology)
- Was the deltaCRR5 mutation fixed in the human population by smallpox?
- A proofreader in the SARS coronavirus genome
- New ebola vaccine protects monkeys
- House of Numbers trailer, website, Wikipedia article (thanks, Levi!)
- Letters read on TWiV 83
Weekly Science Picks
Alan – Evernote
Rich – The Knife Man by Wendy Moore
Vincent – The Pump Handle
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv.
A review of the movie: http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numb…
In this episode you say that the fatality rate for intentional smallpox infection via the middle-eastern method was 1%, as opposed to 30% for natural infection. You go on to say that this constitutes a 30-fold increase in likelihood of survival, when in fact it is a 1.41-fold increase.