Aetiology
Discussing causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena.
Profile
"...a veritable expert on tawdry cosmetic procedures gone horribly awry..."--Kevin Beck
Tara C. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology. Her research involves a number of pathogens at the animal-human nexus. Additionally, she is the founder of Iowa Citizens for Science and also writes for The Panda's Thumb and WIRED SCIENCE's Correlations. Please note the views expressed on this site are Dr. Smith's alone and may not be representative of the groups mentioned above.
Search this blog
Recent Comments
- Scott on Bacteriophages to Fight Bacteria: Is this the Beginning of the End?
- FM on On Hiatus
- Mountain Man on On Hiatus
- travesti on Sacrificing health for art
- Michael on On Hiatus
- Bykezzap on On Hiatus
- Casey on Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, and Milk
- pat on On Hiatus
- pat on On Hiatus
- Roy Hinkley on On Hiatus
Categories
- AIDS/HIV
- Academia
- Activism
- Antibiotic resistance
- Blog carnivals
- Blogging news
- Book review
- Cancer epidemiology
- Clinical trials
- Ecology
- General Epidemiology
- General biology
- Historical studies of disease
- Housekeeping
- Humor
- Infectious causes of chronic disease
- Infectious disease
- Influenza
- Intelligent design/creationism
- Iowa/area news
- Malaria
- Misc.
- Outbreak
- Policy
- Politics
- Public health
- Science education
- Science journalism
- Skepticism
- Various bacteria
- Various viruses
- Women and science
- wtf?
Recent Posts
- On Hiatus
- Better news from the art world
- Clinton and Obama parrot the "vaccine and autism connection inconclusive" line
- Sacrificing health for art
- The controversy surrounding the existence of nanobacteria
- A Deeper Look into Adenovirus-36 and Obesity
- Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, and Milk
- Infectious Disease-Chronic Inflammation-Cancer
- Big Questions, Little Answers: the debate over autism
- Bacteriophages to Fight Bacteria: Is this the Beginning of the End?
Infectious Disease Series
- Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses series
- Did Yersinia pestis really cause the Black Death? series
- Pandemic Influenza Series
- "The Basics" series
- Aetiology archives
- Scienceblogs homepage Evolution and general biology sites
- BioEd Online
- Bioliteracy Project
- Evolution and Medicine
- National Center for Science Education
- Iowa Citizens for Science
- Microbial Life
- Talk Design
- Talk Origins
- Understanding Evolution
- afarensis
- BioBlog
- Biology News Net
- A Blog Around the Clock
- bootstrap analysis
- Eastern Blot
- Evolutionary Times
- Evolving Thoughts
- Gene Expression
- Germ Tales
- Grey Thumb blog
- Immunoblogging
- Invasive Species Weblog
- John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
- Living the Scientific Life
- The Loom
- Mike the Mad Biologist
- Neurotopia
- Notes from the Biomass
- Ocellated
- Ontogeny
- The Panda's Thumb
- Pharyngula
- The Questionable Authority
- Red State Rabble
- SciAm Observations
- Science Matters
- The Scientific Activist
- She Blinded Me With Science!
- Stranger Fruit
- Sunbeams from Cucumbers
- Thoughts from Kansas
- Three-Toed Sloth
- Viva la Evolution!
- World Science Public health & infectious disease sites
- AIDS information--collected links
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy
- Epidemiology for the Uninitiated
- Flu wiki
- University of Iowa Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases
- The AIDS Awareness Blog
- AIDS Truth
- Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments
- Autism Diva
- Autism--Natural Variation
- Bad Science
- Political Health
- Complex Medium
- Dogged Blog
- Dr. Flea
- Effect Measure
- EpiMonday
- The Flu News blog
- Genetics and Health
- GruntDoc
- H5N1
- Moment of Science
- Over my med body
- Parallel Universes
- Respectful Insolence
- Rudd Sound Bites
- Stayin' Alive
- Terra Sigillata
- Time global health blog
- Unintelligent Design
- Bad Astronomy Blog
- The Boiling Point
- Buridan's ass
- Cosmic Variance
- Crooked Timber
- DailyKos
- The Disgruntled Chemist
- Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- The Education Wonks
- Factesque
- Framing Science
- Hillbilly, please
- The History blog
- A History of Histrionics
- The Intersection
- In the Pipeline
- IowaBlogs
- Murky Thoughts
- The Next Hurrah
- Nobel Intent
- Perceiving Wholes
- Plog-Blog
- Political Forecast
- Pooflingers Anonymous
- The Sceptical Chymist
- Schneier on Security
- Scienceline
- Scientists as parents (from Science magazine)
- Science Buzz
- Science in the News (Sigma Xi site)
- Skeptico
- Unfutz
- Unscrewing the Inscrutable
- Wheat-dogg's world
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- May 2005
Blogroll
Subscribe via Email
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
Archives
About
Aetiology is a web log discussing a wide variety of issues pertaining to the science of biology. While much of the focus is on the epidemiology of infectious disease or general microbiology, these are fields that lend themselves to discussion of a much wider range of topics: general epidemiology, vaccines, medicine, public health, pseudoscience, and politics, just to name a handful. A discussion of the microbial world reaches into many facets of our everyday lives.
Tara C. Smith is currently an assistant professor of Epidemiology in Iowa. Born and raised in Findlay, Ohio, Tara received her B.S. in Biology from Yale University in 1998. A "temporary" stint as a technician led to a Ph.D. in microbial pathogenesis and virulence factor regulation in Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococcus) at the Medical University of Ohio in Toledo. She completed post-doctoral training in molecular epidemiology at the University of Michigan. Her current research centers includes projects investigating the epidemiology and molecular biology of Streptococcus agalactiae, E. coli, Streptococcus suis, and Staphylococcus aureus. Additional interests include microbial ecology, emerging diseases, zoonoses, and infectious causes of chronic disease.
Tara has also spent a lot of time discussing the value of teaching evolution, and educating others about "intelligent design" and other forms of creationism. She writes for The Panda's Thumb and WIRED SCIENCE's Correlations, and is the founder of Iowa Citizens for Science and the mother of two young children.
In addition to publishing in scientific journals, she has written books on the topics of Ebola, group A streptococcus, and group B streptococcus.
A recent interview discussing many of the topics above can be found here, and Dr. Smith's wikipedia biography can be found here.
Posts prior to January 2006 can be found at the original Blogger site. Posts relating to her lab and teaching can be found at her laboratory website, Emergence.

