RT Journal
A1 Adalja AA
T1 EMerging infections 8
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2009
FD March 18
VO 301
IS 11
SP 1175
OP 1175
DO 10.1001/jama.2009.335
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.335
AB 
While the human species has developed an armamentarium to ward off the known infectious threats to health, the microbial world has not been idle. One only has to peruse newspaper headlines to realize that reports of emerging infections are increasing at an alarming rate. Humans around the world are continually battling viruses, bacteria, prions, and parasites. Sorting through the plethora of new infectious threats to human health and biosecurity can be daunting, even for infectious disease specialists. The rapid-fire pace with which new discoveries of unknown pathogens are announced makes most textbooks irrelevant when it comes to this topic, and one is left to use Internet search engines when colleagues or patients inquire about some exotic new infection creating havoc on the other side of the globe. A recent review on this topic begins with a fitting 19th-century quote from Rudolf Virchow: “Not a single year passes without [which] . . . we can tell the world: here is a new disease!”1