This article was published on the "Real Clear Science" website on November 15th, 2013 by David Burke; a man who studies microbiology to make a living. David is one of the countless epidemiologists in the world and in this article he provides a first hand account to show readers what it is like to be in his shoes.
In his article "The Haunting World of the Disease Detectives", Burke tells about an outbreak of neurological problems among workers at a pig slaughter house. His description of the way the epidemiologists went about finding where the problem stemmed from was very similar to how John Snow attempted to find where the outbreaks of cholera were originating.
Burke writes, "By examining a
map of worker stations in the slaughterhouse, epidemiologists determined that
everyone who became ill was located in the vicinity of a brain processing
machine. The one exception was a woman whose best friend worked at the brain
harvesting station, and she would spend her breaks conversing with her friend
near that station." When I read that, I instantly thought
of the parallels between Snow and these epidemiologists, even down to cracking
the code of the exceptions.
This article really shows how inquisitive and logical epidemiologists must be, and shows how they continue to do their detective work until they are completely satisfied. Burke also points out that thanks to the work of epidemiologists, people in the medical field who are accused of medication errors can be proved innocent. I found it intriguing to get to see that there are several ways these people contribute to society, in addition to understanding and preventing the most infectious diseases on the planet.
Burke makes it obvious that being an epidemiologists is no happy-go-lucky career, but rather it is a career that requires intelligence, bravery and mental toughness. These men and women put themselves at risk constantly, in order to protect all of us. They also have to be conscious that more and more innocent people's lives can be taken if they don't solve the problem quickly. They are always trying to find a cure, test new experiments, and track diseases. Epidemiologists have an incredibly important job in society, and this article helped me realize that they deserve much more credit.
Stephanie Cohen
Picture from: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/images/p08-to-p09/p096-4-jpg.jpg
I agree with you, the parallels between the investigations of John Snow and Dr. Burke are uncanny. The fact that they both used maps and background knowledge about the demographic in question brought out a lot of important similarities. I think that this article really serves to show that epidemiology is an occupation that will never subside and will always be important in society. Disease outbreaks will always be present and the key to understanding and dealing with disease will always be finding and researching the root of an epidemic.
ReplyDeleteThe process by which they figured out which people were ill in the slaughterhouse reminds me of the Ghost Map that we studied with our Cholera unit. John Snow used the same kind of idea in London. It's funny how far apart these two outbreaks were, but how similarly they were found.
ReplyDeleteI find it very interesting how John Snow's method was used by the epidemiologists. I think people do need to give more credit to these people. Like you said, they are risking their lives to help keep us safe and protect us from an outbreak.
ReplyDeleteI found this article to be very interesting and informative. Just by reading this response to the article you used I learned many different points of why Epidemiologists are very important.
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