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Article: Bug off! First, it sickened birds. Then, it struck humans: The mysterious spread of the West Nile virus.(Life: viruses)
- Article from:
- Science World
- Article date:
- April 26, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Scholastic, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Veterinarians are used to treating a wide variety of animal patients. But when a woman carrying a black crow walked into John Charos's waiting room in June 1999, the Queens, New York, doctor was surprised. "It looked so comfy," he says. Crows are wild birds with a reputation for loud behavior. "But this one wasn't cawing or flapping its wings." Turns out, the bird was uncharacteristically calm because it was ill.
What Charos didn't know at the time was that he was treating one of the earliest victims of West Nile virus (nonliving particle that invades and reproduces in a living cell) in the U.S. The mosquito-borne (transmitted by mosquitoes) virus had never ...