In the current movie, “Contagion,” a virus hops from a pig to a man in China and quickly spreads illness and death throughout the world. Could this be for real? An award-winning scientific writer will address this threat in Evanston Sunday in a free lecture, open to the public, at Northwestern University.
In the current movie, “Contagion,” a virus hops from a pig to a man in China and quickly spreads illness and death throughout the world. Could this be for real? An award-winning scientific writer will address this threat in Evanston Sunday in a free lecture, open to the public, at Northwestern University.
The speaker, Maryn McKenna, is author of “Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA,” and an “embedded” writer with the Center for Disease Control during the anthrax attacks on Congress.
She will lead a discussion on the threats of communicable disease outbreaks with a panel of health experts, including City of Evanston Health Department communicable disease surveillance specialist Margaret Mathias Keeler.
“From Hollywood to Public Health Policy” will take place Sunday from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Room L07 of Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road.
McKenna, a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, writes about public health, medicine, and food policy for national magazines and medical journals and says she finds emerging diseases “strangely exciting.”
She is also author of “Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.” The first history of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Services, the book was named one of the best science books of 2004 by Amazon.Com.