Top 5 Worst Diseases Ever

Guest Blogger Eileene offers up today's top 5...

I hope I never get any of these. Here's why.

When I was a little kid, I had a sadistic little mind. Therefore I jumped at the opportunity to check out a book at the public library about the five worst pandemics ever to infect mankind. This did not serve me as well as I would have thought. Since then, I’ve been pretty paranoid about strange infectious diseases and have always thanked my lucky stars I didn’t have this disease or that one. I’m not talking about the strange things people are born with, but the diseases that we could catch! Here is a top five list of the diseases I hope I never get (and you should to). Let’s all be thankful we don’t have them.

Person dressed up like a bird.  Probably with a pocket full of posies too.

5: Whatever caused the Black Death. Did you know there is currently a lot of research that postulates the black death wasn’t actually caused by the bubonic plague but a different disease.  According to some new mathematical modeling techniques, it appears that the bubonic plague, while present in Europe at the time of the black death, was not nearly prevalent enough to have caused it.  However, did you know that in northern Europe there is a subset of the population that is immune to the HIV?  It’s because of mutations caused in their genes passed down the generations since the black death!  One thing is for certain though, whether or not it was bubonic plague that caused the black death, I hope I never ever catch what it was.

Yeah, it's not somewhere you want to go.

4: Leprosy.  Ever since I read about leprosy (now called Hansen’s disease) and getting sent off to leper colonies (Hansen’s Disease Communities) I’ve been uber grateful I do not have leprosy.  Watching Kingdom of Heaven didn’t help this phobia either because after seeing King Baldwin of Jerusalem’s face after he died from leprosy scarred me for life.  I still remember having an argument with my cousin when I was about 10 that God didn’t really give people leprosy to punish them because it was spread through the air (I learned this from my book).  She maintained that God indeed gave leprosy to people to punish them because it was in the Bible and if I was bad, I'd get it too...  She also believed God planted dinosaur fossils to test the true believer.  Needless to say, I got my distrust of authority attitude at a young age.  I’ll expand on this one on a later day, though.

Do you see what happens, Larry?

3: Polio.  Some people with polio ended up living in an iron lung.   That would be a very boring life.  Possibly worse than living in a bubble or having locked in syndrome.   You’re also always dependent on people and electricity to survive.  I try to never be dependent on anyone else, so being in an iron lung wouldn't match my personality.  Not in the slightest.  See the case of this poor woman who died when the electricity at her house failed, and the backup generator didn’t work either.  Her family also was too slow to use the hand pump for the iron lung so she died.   Read more here.

This monkey might give you Ebola.

2: Ebola.  You basically hemorrhage all of your organs and tissues that are supposed to be solid and in your body out of your orifices.  I hope I never get this.  Interesting tidbit: Some researchers believe the black death may have been caused by a similar disease to Ebola.  Read The Hot Zone for a great book about Ebola!

Word.

1: Zombie Apocalypse disease.  Let’s all hope we don’t get bitten and catch the Zombie infection when the ZA happens.  I'm pretty sure I'd survive, though.  I have a killer ZA survival plan ... and we all know it’s going to happen.

Let us know what your most feared disease is in the comments below, or simply drop a quick note to let Eileene know what you think!  Check out Eileen's blog, Happiness is Excellence, and as always, share with your friends on Facebook!