The Mutant Genes behind the Black Death

[knocker]

 

Each year, 4 million people visit Yosemite National Park in California. Most bring back photos, postcards and an occasional sunburn. But two unlucky visitors this summer got a very different souvenir. They got the plague.

 

This quintessential medieval disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted most often by fleabites, still surfaces in a handful of cases each year in the western United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its historical record is far more macabre. The plague of Justinian from 541 to 543 decimated nearly half the population in the Mediterranean, while the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed one in every three Europeans.

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mutant-genes-behind-the-black-death/

[gary1365]

And in modern times its no worse than an ear infection thank god for antibiotics