The Zoonotic B-List
Nine stories of disease you've never heard of and what you can learn from them. In Spring of 2024, a group of UCLA undergraduate Human Biology and Society majors—HBS majors—set out to explore the B-list of diseases. But they nonetheless prevailed and together they created this amazing series stories about a B-list of zoonotic diseases, from Brucellosis to Virulent Newcastle Disease. Together, they explored a series of diseases you've never heard of and asked: what can we learn from them?
The Zoonotic B-List
Pathogen Perspectives: Leptospirosis
Leptospirosis is an infection in the blood by a bacteria called Leptospira. Biologically, the main route of infection for humans is through contact with animal urine or soil that is infected with Leptospira. This usually occurs through contact with waterways contaminated with urine. However, it is difficult to distinguish this disease from others as this disease does not have any unique symptoms.
Our podcast examines the political, economic, biological, and social or cultural factors that should be taken into account when developing a proposal for a solution to combating the impact of leptospirosis. Whether the solution should be developing a vaccine, establishing public service campaigns, or a particular governmental policy will be debated throughout the greatest thirty minutes in history!
Produced by Mark Botros, Nayra Gharpetian, Olivia Nguyen, Siddhant Watwani
These podcast episodes were created by members of the 2024 Spring Capstone course in the Human Biology and Society major at UCLA's Institute for Society and Genetics (https://socgen.ucla.edu/). The faculty sponsor is Christopher Kelty. For questions or concerns email ckelty@ucla.edu. For more information about any of these diseases please consult the US Centers for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/) .