Randomness a key in spread of disease, other 'evil'
January 2, 2018 by Tom Fleischman, Cornell University
An unfortunate church dinner more than 100 years ago did more than just spread typhoid fever to scores of Californians. It led theorists on a quest to understand why many diseases - including typhoid, measles, polio, malaria, even cancer - take so much longer to develop in some affected people than in others.
It's been known for more than 60 years that the incubation periods of numerous diseases follow a certain pattern: relatively quick appearance of symptoms in most cases, but longer - sometimes much longer - periods for others. It's known as Sartwell's law, named for Philip E. Sartwell, the epidemiologist who identified it in the 1950s, but why it holds true has never been explained.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-randomness-key-disease-evil.html#jCp
