Infectious Diseases

Harold Ginsberg, 85, a microbiologist who pioneered the study of viruses and infectious diseases, died of pneumonia Feb. 2 in Woods Hole, Mass. Dr. Ginsberg headed the microbiology departments at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, and conducted research for the National Institutes of Health. Colleagues said his work laid the foundation for the field of virology, which is the study of viruses and viral diseases. In the 1950s, Dr. Ginsberg showed that common childhood infections such as atypical pneumonia and pharyngitis were caused by adenoviruses -- which can survive long periods outside a host.

Dr. Leon Jacobs, NIMH officialDr. Leon Jacobs, an expert on parasitic disease and former director of the center at the National Institutes of Health that works with foreign scientists, died of cancer Tuesday in Washington, D.C. He was 80.He worked at the institutes for 41 years and was known for his research on blindness caused by toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease.At various times he was chief of the laboratory of parasitic diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, scientific director of biological sciences at the health institutes and associate director for collaborative research.

Dr. Phuong X. Nguyen has joined the surgical department at Mercy Medical Center, where he will focus on general surgery. Nguyen graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and earned his medical degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Bonnie Eareckson has been appointed the chief of human resource management service for the Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System. Eareckson earned her undergraduate degree in 1983 from Southern Career Institute. Dr. Deepak Kashyap has joined the Endocrine and Diabetes Center at Franklin Square Hospital Center.

A few years ago, parents who arrived at Dr. Steven E. Caplan's office with a cranky toddler tugging at his ear were likely to go home with an antibiotic. These days, if an ear exam doesn't show clear signs of infection, the Baltimore pediatrician sometimes asks parents to wait a day or two to see if the symptoms persist.Dr. Caplan is one of a growing number of doctors who are trying to reduce the use of antibiotics amid fear that infectious diseases are growing resistant to them. A report issued last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta warned that infectious diseases are on a global rebound.

GENEVA - Although earthquakes and floods usually receive the most prominent news coverage, infectious diseases are claiming far more lives than natural disasters, according to a report issued yesterday by the Red Cross. The death toll from infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is 160 times greater than the number of people killed in last year's major earthquakes in Turkey, cyclones in India and floods in Venezuela, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Dr. Harvey R. Fischman, a retired epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, died of renal failure May 13 at his Broadmead Retirement Community home in Cockeysville. He was 84. Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., he earned his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College, a veterinary degree from the old Middlesex College in Waltham, Mass., and studied at Ecole Nationale Veterinaire d'Alfort in Paris. He worked with United Nations relief agencies in Asia and the Middle East to control infectious diseases among animals and to bring modern veterinary medicine to China in the 1940s and 1950s.

In the last century in the developed world, death's face has become wrinkled. In 1900, one of death's most common visages was that of a 5-year-old child struggling for breath, trying to clear his or her lungs of fluids caused by the sudden assault of pneumonia or perhaps influenza. Today, death's favorite weapon is a lethal blockage in one of the arteries of the heart, caused by plaques that form gradually during 70 years or more of life. So, what dramatic changes in the Grim Reaper's handiwork can we expect in the next 50 years?

Dr. Theodore E. Woodward, a retired University of Maryland medical educator who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work in the field of infectious diseases, died of heart failure yesterday at his Roland Park home. He was 91. He was chairman of the UM medical school's Department of Medicine from 1954 to 1981, and earlier had conducted influential studies related to cholera, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, malaria and tuberculosis. "He had one of the richest careers in medicine I know about," said Dr. William L. Henrich, current chairman of the Department of Medicine.

An employee at the National Institutes of Health was arrested yesterday, accused of making an anthrax threat against an assessor's office in Florida with which she was having a property tax dispute, the FBI's Miami office said. Michelle Ledgister, 43, of Bethesda surrendered to federal agents on the parking lot of a Rockville strip mall near her work at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Special Agent Judy Orihuela, an FBI spokeswoman. After losing a claim for property tax relief on a home she owned in Parkland, Fla., Ledgister late last month left a voice mail message at the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office in Fort Lauderdale, her arrest warrant said.

Mercy High School alumna named Fulbright scholar 2 Mercy High School alumna Dorothy Smith, a recent Boston College graduate, has been named a Fulbright scholar. Smith, a Parkville resident who graduated from Mercy in 2005, will travel to Jordan to study Arabic for two months before arriving in Oman in August. During her year in Oman, she will conduct research on water conservation education and awareness. She is the first alumna in Mercy's 49-year history to be named a Fulbright scholar.