The Triangle

Issue date: 4/8/05 Section: Sci-Tech

Media Credit: http://www.vaccines.mil The tularemia bacterium, francisella tularensis, which causes rare and serious illness.

It is often depicted in movies how panicky major events, such as natural disasters, diseases, wars, and famine can be. They are panicky not because of the violence and rapidness associated with them, but simply because we are always caught off guard.

We tend to panic when we do not know what to do; we tend to make things worse when we are uninformed.

I firmly believe that "knowledge is power." A good example could be AIDS. Nearly two decades ago people were afraid of the words AIDS and HIV, they did not really know what they meant. Just watch Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in Philadelphia and you will know what I am talking about.

Continuing with cinematographic examples, the movie Outbreak (Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey) depicts what could happen if an airborne bacterium is accidentally unleashed. How realistic is it? That's up to the experts. But if you want more real-life drama, forget about movies and let's look at Michael Moore's documentaries, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Material from those documentaries is unbelievable, but shows the other side of the coin. The images of paper, dust and debris floating in between New York City's skyscrapers seem like it was taken from a fictional movie, but it was real.

The point here is to not panic when some new threatening agent, disease, or situation suddenly appears.

It was panic and lack of knowledge combined that resulted in the death of a loved one and originated my inspiration to write the present article. The reason for this writing piece is solely to inform.

Three weeks ago someone close to me died of a violent disease known as "rabbit fever" caused by a bacteria called tularemia. It was a quick, sudden death. It barely gave us time to digest and comprehend that she was dying; much less time to try to find what she had and how to treat it.

It was precisely awareness that could have saved her. But doctors could not determine what she had; therefore, they could not treat her.

She had recently traveled to Santiago, Chile and then returned home to Caracas, Venezuela. This bacteria is found only in cold regions and, naturally, you would think she caught it in Chile. However, the bacterium has only been found in Nordic countries. How did she caught it remains unknown.

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