Researcher Dies After Studying Plague Bacteria

"Because this form of the bacteria is not known to cause problems in healthy people,

What you don't know, Can kill you

"... the bacteria that causes the plague." Now which particular plague would that be?

Yersinia pestis is the bubonic plague - the black death. Strange that anyone would die of it, though, in this day and age - especially a microbiologist who was known to be exposed to it.

It is treatable with antibiotics (which of course weren't available back when it was properly termed plague).

Strange indeed.

The point I was making was the 'journalese' technique used here - suggesting that either there was only one 'plague event' in history, or that all plagues were caused by the same bacillus.

_{^{[How about the plague of locusts? ]}}

"...Casadaban, a molecular genetics professor at the..."

I think this is self-explanatory

Yay! A new Un-treatable mutant form of the black plague, coming to a town near you.

^{Population control}