If I were to tell you that organisms that gruesomely maim or kill hundreds of people yearly are being sold to children, you might think that’s a dreadful thing. But if I explain I’m just talking about puppies, which turn into dogs and sometimes dogs snarl and bite and attack, you might start off  leery but with a sensible perspective.

Poor old E.coli, a bacterium that we all have by the millions in our gut and if we did not, we’d probably suffer. Some of its variants, such as the 0104:H4 E. coli that killed and sickened so many people in Europe since May, are awful. But not most. How are people going to keep their heads on straight about E. coli in general when reading such stories as this:

• Reuters – Sarah McBride:E. coli seen spawning biofuel in five years ; The lead is “The bacteria behind food poisoning worldwide, the mighty E. coli, could be …’ and so on, with the further declaration a few grafs on that “When ingested by humans, E. coli can be dangerous, even fatal.”

It’s not as though we can have a science-fact police patrol of crusading science writers running around upbraiding and whacking across the shins every general assignment reporter who merely needs a catchy gimmick for a story but doesn’t know much about E. coli or other topics usually confined to small scholarly circles. And if a nasty E. coli strain is on the loose, that’s news. But it is a shame that, increasingly, this ubiquitous and usually benign microbe must be seen by the public as, above all and foremost, a terrible public health threat.

Microbial profiling, that’s what it is.

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.