And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
                                                    Luke 21:11

Definition of PESTILENCE

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Victor Vasnetsov. The Lamb is visible at the top.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are described in the last book of the New Testament of the Bible, called the Book of Revelation of Jesus Christ to Saint John the Evangelist at 6:1-8. The chapter tells of a "'book', or 'scroll', in God's right hand that is sealed with seven seals". The Lamb of God, or Lion of Judah, (Jesus Christ) opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons forth four beings that ride out on white, red, black, and pale horses. Although some interpretations differ, in most accounts, the four riders are seen as symbolizing Conquest,^[1] War,^[2] Famine,^[3] and Death, respectively. The Christian apocalyptic vision is that the four horsemen are to set a divine apocalypse upon the world as harbingers of the Last Judgment^[1][4]

Review

Health professionals and those involved in infectious disease research will find Emerging Viruses startling: Harvard researcher Horowitz's studies gather evidence to conclude that AIDS and the Ebola viruses evolved during cancer virus experiments in which monkeys were infected with viral genes from other animals. Certain to spark controversy, this provides quite a different view of virus mutations and evolution. -- Midwest Book Review

Emerging viral diseases

1. Stuart T. Nichol*†,
2. Jiro Arikawa‡, and
3. Yoshihiro Kawaoka§¶

We live in an era of rapidly changing global landscapes and local environments. Viruses with RNA as their genetic material can quickly adapt to and exploit these varying conditions because of the high error rates of the virus enzymes (polymerases) that replicate their genomes. It comes as no surprise, then, that several prominent recent examples of emerging or re-emerging diseases are caused by RNA viruses. However, a complex interplay of factors can influence disease emergence. In addition to virus genetic variation (mutation, recombination, and reassortment), environmental factors (including ecological, social, health care, and behavioral influences) can play important roles. These can include (i) changing weather patterns (e.g., El Niño effects) and damming of rivers, which alters potential virus vector or host abundance and distribution, and (ii) tropical deforestation, which brings humans in close contact with these species-rich (hosts and their parasites) environments. Such factors, coupled with enormous increases in the human population during the last 50 years and urbanization in many developing countries, have greatly expanded the number of sampling events testing the fitness of RNA virus variants in different human cell backgrounds and potential transmission modes. This change, together with the advances in the speed and volume of global transportation, combines to create increased opportunity for emergence and re-emergence of viral diseases. The purpose of this review is to present some prominent recent examples of emerging and re-emerging RNA virus diseases (influenza, hantaviruses, Ebola virus, and Nipah virus) to try to convey a sense of the excitement within this field and the important advances coming about as new technologies are being applied to research the basic question of how new disease outbreaks occur and whether we can gain predictive capability.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12411.full


PubMed.gov

Emerging viruses.