The Plague

Bird flu and swine flu gave us a fright in years past, but the real plague could be released upon the world any minute. Scientists have reconstructed the DNA microbe of the bubonic plague, aka the Black Death, in the hope of figuring out what made it so very powerful. The New York Times reports that a lab recently grew a H5N1 flu virus, "one of the most dangerous flu viruses ever known, and made it even more dangerous — by tweaking it genetically to make it more contagious."