A Michael Broad Blog
RELATED: Captive Pallas’s cats die of toxoplasmosis The fact in the title is true. Humans are indeed more likely to get toxoplasmosis from eating raw foods than from cat feces. Here’s why: Prevalence in raw meat: The parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, Toxoplasma gondii, forms cysts in the muscle tissue of infected animals. Consuming undercooked …
The purpose of this article is to ‘fact check’ or put some sensible reality into what I would consider to be sensationalist headlines in the news media about a study (which I can’t find sadly on the Internet) which according to the news media states that antibiotic-resistant superbugs are jumping from cats and dogs …
For many years, as long as I can remember, there have been numerous articles online about the Black Death and how it was spread in mediaeval Europe. There have been myths and inaccuracies and I for one have been responsible for some inaccuracies. However, it seems that gradually we are better understanding one of …
Roughly twice as many viruses pass from humans to animals than from animals to people (findings of a recent study – see below for summary) Surprisingly, we find that humans are as much a source as a sink for viral spillover events, insofar as we infer more viral host jumps from humans to other …
I like the Mail Online because they do have some good cat articles to encourage me to write but this one from the deputy health editor in America, Alexa Lardieri, is irresponsible and should not have been written. The title states that pet cats are a ‘major harborer of deadly diseases’ and that cats …
NEWS AND VIEWS: The Mail Online has a sensationalist headline as per my headline in which they add that “officials rushed to contain virus”. Rare and normally hard to spread It sounds as if Oregan is about to be swamped by a bubonic plague epidemic but it’s not. Bubonic plague is very rare in …
Arsenal (UK Premier League team) footballer star Nuno Tavares has multiple dogs. I don’t know how many but he has uploaded videos to social media of him kissing two of his dogs “with plenty of tongue” as reported by the Daily Star. It looks as though he is kissing them passionately on the lips …
NEWS AND OPINION: I make sure that people realise that in some of my articles I express my opinion as I feel I must but opinions are always based on hard facts and careful research. In this instance, remarkably, Google News reports on a UK government website article about sporotrichosis, a fungal disease commonly …
