Thank you sir, it's always nice to hear from a fan

Rory, You've got the best teases for content on MicrobeWorld hands down! Thanks.

This is incredible. I wonder if this procedure will not be irritating to most people. Anyway , my suggestion is that the procedure should be subjected to serious peer-review . Also, care should be taken to avoid indiscriminate use of this procedure, especially in the less developed world. Until probably the World Health Organisation ( W H O) comes out with a blueprint or statement validating the use of this procedure ,serious caution should be exercised.

I'm with you Rory! Thanks for the amazing images you've been uploading over the past few weeks.

Thank you for the amusing Morris Day & The Time visual reference, LOL.

This discovery can be of tremendous use in the bioremediation of oil spillages . It should be given a wider dissemination.

I recall the Erol Flynn autobiography "My Wicked, Wicked Ways." He got into a confrontation in the Mediterranean while on a yacht and sustained a serious HUMAN bite. He almost lost his arm. Give me a (nonrabid) dog bite any day.

Bacteria found include:

Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning; Clostridium, Corynebacterium, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia — all of which are associated with pneumonia and other infections; E. coli; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie serious hospital-associated infections.

Thanks Prof. Schmidt for the answer! I'm currently reading Guns, Germs, & Steel (Jared Diamond) where the idea of human/animal close proximity habitation is put forth as the reason European explorers had already developed resistances to the diseases that so completely devastated indigenous New World peoples - seems like we're still seeing this in action. - R. Meehan

Rory asks a great question. So what's the answer? The short one is crowding, the animals are living in very close proximity to people and the the infectious agents in the question have the ability to infect more than one species. Thus they spread easily amplifying their numbers and sometimes increase the ease with which they cause disease or its severity. So as the animal (including people) and/or insects shed the infectious agent, whether it be virus, bacteria or fungi, if the infectious agent has the ability to infect more than one species it spread easily within the community. Thus as the population density of animals and people increases the likelihood of the agent expanding and infecting additional animals and people increases and thus the outbreak expands. How can we protect ourselves today? Some of the the best solutions for the controlling the spread of infectious agents are simple and straight forward like washing your hands before interacting with food and your mucosal surfaces (eyes, nose, mouth) and by controlling the dispersal of the agent by coughing/sneezing into your shoulder. The other way, if available, is through immunization. The great disease that is no more, small pox, was eliminated from the face of the planet through vaccination.