These Aren't Your Mother's Germs

By Alicia Dorr in Miscellaneous on Sep 17, 2007 6:47PM

Just so you know, nobody is going to let you forget about global warming for more than five minutes. Whether it's Al Gore's tears, your alderman's lightbulbs, or Blackle, somebody's always got some new way to save the earth and they want to bend your ear about it while they are driving home. The newest thing you should be worried about? How global warming is going to affect your health.

About 12,000 physicians, health care professionals, researchers and other scholarly people are in Chicago today to attend the American Society for Microbiology's conference on germs. The keynote address will be on the issue of global warming and how it will affect the rate of disease in humans, including the possible (and probable) rise of insect-borne diseases like malaria.

Global warming could also be linked to the flu, since it passes fluidly in warmer climates on a year-wide basis. That kind of freaks us out, and anyone else who is afraid of getting on an enclosed train car/using a public toilet/touching anything/sitting in an office during flu season. Because while we wash our hands, we all know you don't. So many of you don’t, in fact, that conference attendees will discuss hand-washing. Other major concerns: super germs and the soccer moms who cause them.

Other scheduled presentations will be given on the increasing amount of drug-resistant germs and how they might be passing staph infections via their fancy white coats. Even if they are, we are incredibly glad this group is talking about all this stuff. We're a lot more impressed with their credentials than our friend who bought solar panels for the garage that houses his SUV.