For northerners, the harbingers of returning spring aren't the welcome birds. We know warm weather is on the way when the first sluggish mosquitoes set out from hibernation, eager to drill our veins. And we know too that they are only the outriders of hungry, buzzing, hateful hordes to come. If the research of Stanford University's Leon Rosenberg pans out, eventually there'll be a way to visit sure death on any mosquito biting a human being. The punishment will fit the crime, without our having to lift a finger in retribution.
Cattle are subject to an array of tick-borne diseases.
If a tick bites a germ-laden cow, it takes in disease organisms along with its meal of bovine blood, then introduces the organisms to the next cow it attacks. Rosenberg worked on breaking the chain. He injected cattle with a solution containing ground-up ticks. This research certainly has immediate implications for veterinary medicine, and for human health as well. But Rosenberg sets his sights higher.