A few years ago, a colleague and I hired a cab to journey across the Sahara Desert, from a tiny oasis town to Luxor in the Nile Valley. Before we could head out, however, the driver insisted that we anoint ourselves with perfume he brought for the occasion–a ritual cleansing to protect us from evil […]
Out of Africa
Seldom has something so tiny and so unprepossessing exacted such an immense toll of human misery. Plasmodium falciparum, the protozoa that causes the most serious form of malaria, looks like a little red comma or pear-shaped stain on the surface of a red blood cell. Yet make no mistake, this tiny protozoa is a deft […]