An unfortunate statistical fluctuation. Maybe not. As Vance Fowler, an infectious-disease specialist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, tells it, the first case appeared in early spring 2008: a 13-year-old girl whose bout with the flu evolved into a life-and-death struggle, still ongoing, with necrotizing pneumonia and a particularly pernicious strain of bacteria known as methi-cillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Should the girl survive, her life will be "forever changed," says Fowler, from pulmonary disease caused by the death of the lung tissue. The next case, a week or so later, was a research technician from Fowler's laboratory, admitted to the hospital with a facial abscess that showed no signs of healing. Again, MRSA was the cause. A week or so after that, the victims were a husband and wife. "Both were admitted with life-threatening acute MRSA infections out of nowhere," he says. "Multiple surgeries. Life- and limb-threatening infections." Neither one worked in a hospital or a long-term care facility, the kind of environments in which such bacteria might commonly be found. Nor had they visited one recently. So how did they get it? "Bad luck, bad genes, a bad bug, or all three," says Fowler.
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