Bug Off!

What you can’t see … can make you sick. Humans have been battling viruses and bacteria since the beginning of time. The malaria parasite has been keeping deadly company with us for 500,000 years. King Tut had it and so did Julius Caesar. What’s keeping this bug going today?

Also, how disease almost halted the most ambitious engineering project in the world … how elite disease detectives puzzle out perplexing epidemics … And – could tiny bugs from spaaace, ace, ace be our ancestors?

Guests:

• Sonia Shah - Author of The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
• Michael Conniff - Historian, director of Global Studies at San Jose State University, and author of Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 (Pitt Latin American Series)
• Mark Pendergrast - Author of Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service
• Robert Zubrin - President of the Mars Society

Descripción en español

First aired August 2, 2010

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