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On
The Light Side
Epidemiology and
James Bonds
Bond
[Editor’s Note:
Epidemiology is a serious business, by and large. As a result, we are
always on the lookout for opportunities to introduce humor to brighten
the lives of our readers. A recent headline caught our interest—“You
only live once: Epidemiologists analyze health risks in all the James
Bond films.” We found the tongue in cheek work published in the
journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease. We can’t improve over
the abstract. Here it is from authors in the Netherlands and the
United Kingdom.]
“Global
travelers, whether tourists or secret agents, are exposed to a
smörgåsbord of infectious agents. We hypothesized that agents
pre-occupied with espionage and counterterrorism may, at their peril,
fail to correctly prioritize travel medicine. To examine our
hypothesis, we examined adherence to international travel advice
during the 86 international journeys that James Bond was observed to
undertake in feature films spanning 1962–2021. Scrutinizing
these missions involved ~3113 mins of evening hours per author that
could easily have been spent on more pressing societal issues. We
uncovered above-average sexual activity, often without sufficient time
for an exchange of sexual history, with a remarkably high mortality
among Bond's sexual partners (27.1; 95% confidence interval
16.4–40.3). Given how inopportune a bout of diarrhea would be in the
midst of a world-saving action, it is striking that Bond is seen
washing his hands on only two occasions, despite numerous exposures to
foodborne pathogens. We hypothesize that his foolhardy courage,
sometimes purposefully eliciting life-threatening situations, might
even be a consequence of Toxoplasmosis.
Bond's approach to vector-borne diseases and neglected tropical
diseases is erratic, sometimes following travel advice to the letter,
but more often dwelling on the side of complete ignorance. Given the
limited time Bond receives to prepare for missions, we urgently ask
his employer MI6 to take its responsibility seriously. We only live
once.”
To read the
entire paper, visit:
https://bit.ly/3qLYLsd ■
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