Mysterious deadly disease surfaces among drug users. Almost sixty cases, in Glasgow, Dublin and English sites, involving local inflammation at the IV injection sites, dropping blood pressure, elevated white blood cell counts, and frequently progressing to heart failure. More than half of affected patients have died, usually within about two days and despite aggressive treatment with antibiotics. Reports last week suggested it might be anthrax, but this has not been borne out. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, called in by British health officials to help with the investigation, says “the emergence of a new disease is possible…Right now, though, the greatest likelihood is that it is an organism previously known and described and showing itself in a new way.” Multiple organisms are cultured out of blood and tissues of victims, but none so far is a likely culprit. Surveillance in the UK and the US (where no cases have yet been seen) is being tightened. Global dissemination of overwhelming infection is just a plane ride away, as AIDS taught us, but AIDS also taught us that the urgency about a disease depends on the constituency it affects. Press releases from health officials so far are attempting to reassure the public that this disease, whatever it may be, appears intrinsically associated with IV drug use.