The most Potent disease

[Chaigidel]

any microbiologists here? what disease has the highest mortality rate overall, is it aids? spainish flu? smallpox?

and what is the most dangerous pathogen in your opinion or by death toll .

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

AIDs i guess... as everyone who contracts it dies from it

[Ummon]

Now, if I remember correctly from my old microbiology courses, Marburg and Ebola viruses have the highest mortality rates around (in the infected population), with Ebola being the champ, if I am not mistaken.

[Gary88]

dont know the answer to that but i do know that half all humans who have ever lived have been killed by (female) mosquitos but they carry over 100 different fatal diseases so...

[Curtana]

Depends what you are measuring.
If it's chance of death for a single infected individual then Ebola is the dog's dangley bits, just as the ever knowledgeable Ummon says.
If it's highest mortality rates over entire populations (and sticking with viruses) then influenza gets a look in. (Are we forgetting the Bird Flu panic already?) Ebola kills its victims fast so it doesn't spread. Not too pleasant if you catch it. Influenza is well adapted to humans so even if it only kills a small percentage it still kills millions. (More evidence of evolution in action?!?!?!)

The Malaria parasite is also a strong candidate in terms of death rates and untold misery.

The ultimate winners would be all those nasty cold war anthrax strains we're sitting on in our biological weapon stores. Lets hope no one cracks those open any time soon.

[The Fish]

Overall, I would say the most dangerous preventable disease (in terms of the number of killed people who were previously relatively healthy) would be malaria. It kills millions of children and young people every year, when it really shouldn't. It's an amazing fact that so much emphasis is put on AIDS (a serious disease no doubt) when it kills only a fraction of the people malaria does. A close second would be diarrheal diseases (cholera, pathogenic E. coli strains, etc.) which also kill millions of children each year, deaths that can be easily prevented by better access to solutions that stop dehydration. The people who suffer from these diseases have the misfortune of living in the wrong parts of the world and being poor; drug companies spend far more money figuring out how to keep rich peoples' penises up than save children in the developing world, unfortunately.

[Zodiac]

AID doesn't kill people , it merely holds the door open for secondary Infections. If I remember right, Smallpox holds the record for the most deaths in history, even though it's effectively out of the ecosystem.

[Chaigidel]

russia and the cdc in atlanta both have specimens of living smallpox-- also russia has weaponized smallpox, which is even nastier(can survive in enviroment for 6 years-- you kick up dust in the wrong spot you start the plague all over again--figuratively)

[Gary88]

drug companies spend far more money figuring out how to keep rich peoples' penises up than save children in the developing world, unfortunately.

whilst i agree i think it is slightly unfair that these people are targeted just because they happen to be in the pharacutical business, clothing manufacturers dont get pestered in the same way to give the homeless clothes etc. however the profit they make on drugs is scandalous

[The Fish]

whilst i agree i think it is slightly unfair that these people are targeted just because they happen to be in the pharacutical business, clothing manufacturers dont get pestered in the same way to give the homeless clothes etc. however the profit they make on drugs is scandalous

I'm not necessarily blaming the drug companies for this phenomenon; it's a reality of having a profit-driven system. Far more money is put into researching the chronic conditions that tend to afflict western societies, rather than the acute diseases that kill millions in the developing world; you can make a lot more money from a person on a cholesterol-lowering drug for life, than from a child who takes an anti-malarial regimen for a week.

[David Deas]

The thing about Ebola is it destroys it's victims so fast it doesn't have time to spread. Small Pox, which is less deadly, has higher potential to ravage entire populations because it's better at spreading itself.

[The Fish]

The thing about Ebola is it destroys it's victims so fast it doesn't have time to spread. Small Pox, which is less deadly, has higher potential to ravage entire populations because it's better at spreading itself.

More important is that filoviruses like Ebola and Marburg cannot be spread via the respiratory route, but only through prolonged contact with bodily fluids. Smallpox is (was) much more readily transmissible.

[David Deas]

I'll agree with that.

[Thanatos]

Ebola, and smallpox if it is ever reintroduced.

[Simetrical]

whilst i agree i think it is slightly unfair that these people are targeted just because they happen to be in the pharacutical business, clothing manufacturers dont get pestered in the same way to give the homeless clothes etc. however the profit they make on drugs is scandalous

Not really. The marginal gross profit is extreme, of course: it costs them probably pennies to make drugs, and they charge dollars per pill. But you have to account for the fact that there's a stupendous up-front cost. Getting a single drug approved by the FDA costs a billion dollars, assuming it ever gets approved. You have to spend many millions on research to come up with a feasible drug in the first place. You have to waste many more millions on pursuing promising drugs that turn out to have unacceptable side effects that will stop them from being approved.

As an example, Pfizer had total quarterly revenue of $12.5 billion. Of that, only $3.39 billion qualified as net income, a little over a quarter. If I'm reading this right, $10 million of that went to shareholders, and all the remainder was reinvested in some fashion (kept on hand, or paid as business expenses for various things). I am, alas, hopelessly uninformed about businesses and related matters, so what I just said was probably silly on several levels, but the general picture is that big businesses don't just rake in your money and pay it out to big execs. The overwhelming majority, in many cases (e.g., Microsoft) all of it, is spent on business. If they didn't do that, they couldn't keep market share.

[Garbarsardar]

Indeed, the second pill costs pennies, the first costs millions.

[mrmouth]

I think influenza and its ability to mutate is what scares virologists the most. Ebola is a scary bug but it almost works against itself given the worst strains kill so quickly.

[Sosobra]

From zee wikipedia

Zaïre ebolavirus
Known human cases and deaths during outbreaks of Zaïre Ebolavirus between 1976 and 2003
Known human cases and deaths during outbreaks of Zaïre Ebolavirus between 1976 and 2003

The Zaïre Ebolavirus has the highest mortality rate, up to 90% in some epidemics, with an average of approximately 83% mortality over 27 years. The case-fatality rates were 88% in 1976, 100% in 1977, 59% in 1994, 81% in 1995, 73% in 1996, 80% in 2001-2002 and 90% in 2003. There have been more outbreaks of Zaïre Ebolavirus than any other strain.

The first outbreak took place on August 26, 1976 in Yambuku, a town in the north of Zaïre. The first recorded case was Mabalo Lokela, a 44-year-old schoolteacher returning from a trip around the north of the state. His high fever was diagnosed as possible malaria and he was subsequently given a quinine shot. Lokela returned to the hospital every day. A week later, his symptoms included uncontrolled vomiting, bloody diarrhea, headache, dizziness, and trouble breathing. Later, he began bleeding from his nose, mouth, and anus. Lokela died on September 8, 1976, roughly 14 days after the onset of symptoms.


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The Hanta virus is pretty bad and can be aerosolized