A theory that won't fly Ebola and other deadly viruses have been much in the news lately, and much in people's minds.
Popular culture has a recurrent fascination with doomsday pathogens.
Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain was a classic incarnation of this scary scenario. In the film, a new mutant strain, carried by a monkey, will depopulate California unless Dustin Hoffman can save the day, and he has only an hour or so to do it. The ostensibly responsible media are not immune to the temptation to stir these fears. But there are no precedents for it, and it's unlikely. He has taught at the New School for Social Research.