The lesson of the Russian plague

Last week, a 28-year-old lab worker died in Siberia after developing a severe pneumonia of unknown origin. Under ordinary circumstances, the death of a young woman from unexplained pneumonia wouldn’t attract much international attention. But Darya Shipilova worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, a facility that handles some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens, including Yersinia pestis , the bacterium that causes plague. What happened next has done…