• Question: WHAT IS THE MOST DANGEROUS MICRO ORGANISM ?

    Asked by anon-231255 to Tom, Steven, Jessica, Haafizah, Clio, Bruno Silvester on 8 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-230784, anon-230938, anon-230934.
    • Photo: Bruno Silvester Lopes

      Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 8 Nov 2019:

      There are lots. Generally micro-organisms are labelled as containment levels (or biosafety levels) 1 to 4, one being the least harmful (some soil microbes) and 4 being the most harmful (exotic viruses such as Marburg virus, Ebola virus, Lassa virus to name a few). Mycobacterium tuberculosis (the organism which causes TB is level 3)

    • Photo: Tom Snelling

      Tom Snelling answered on 9 Nov 2019:

      There are a lot of different micro-organisms that are dangerous, we even have some dangerous ones on our skin and within us at the moment! In people that are sick or suffering from a disease their body can become too weak to fight against these micro-organisms. The biggest concern is not what is the most dangerous micro-organism but what ones have become resistant to the drugs that we use to kill them. Some micro-organisms have become so resistant to antibiotics that they are now the biggest threat to humans, even though they are not the most dangerous ones.

    • Photo: Jessica Mitchell

      Jessica Mitchell answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Ooooh! Tricky question! I suppose this would depend on where you live and what you do. If you don’t have access to health care, any microbe can be very dangerous. As Bruno says there are contaminant levels for microbes to give us an idea of how dangerous they can be. In my experience TB or Mycobacterium is very dangerous, it killed a lot of my meerkats when I worked in south Africa and is a very dangerous human disease in Nepal.

    • Photo: Clio Andreae

      Clio Andreae answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      As everyone has said loads of viruses and bacteria are very dangerous. I worked on a bad bacteria in containment level 3 (a lab similar to those what you would see in films like Pandemic or contagion) that is a top 3 killer in Thailand called Burkholderia pseudomallei which can infect and part of your body. Ebola and HIV are pretty nasty. Bacteria being able to resist treatment with antibiotics is becoming a very real and dangerous threat to human health so normal hospital infections will become more dangerous without new drugs.

    • Photo: Steven Rudder

      Steven Rudder answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Clostridium botulinum is very dangerous. Botulinum toxin, one of the most poisonous biological substances known.

    • Photo: Haafizah Hoosen

      Haafizah Hoosen answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      There are loads of different micro-organisms that are dangerous so it’s difficult to pick just one (or two). Virus are the ones that you’re most likely to hear are quite dangerous like Ebola or HIV, even the Flu!
      But because recently the world has been a little eager to get rid of their sickness, we’ve used things like antibiotics more often than we should have. Antibiotics only work on some bacteria but we’ve used them for all sorts!
      So bacterias that could have been killed by them before may be stronger, so they can be dangerous if the right medicine (antibiotic) isn’t used.

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