Pulitzer Center Update

The Next Ebola?

March 14, 2017 | Newsletter
By
Tom Hundley
Mahal, an orangutan, is pictured in March 2010 with his surrogate mother, MJ, at the Milwaukee County Zoo. The young orangutan, 3 years old in the photo, was transferred to Milwaukee from a zoo in Colorado after his birth mother rejected him. Image by Mark Hoffman. United States, 2012.

Mahal, an orangutan, is pictured in March 2010 with his surrogate mother, MJ, at the Milwaukee County Zoo. The young orangutan, 3 years old in the photo, was transferred to Milwaukee from a zoo in Colorado after his birth mother rejected him. Image by Mark Hoffman. United States, 2012.

Animal to Man, Fear of the Next Pandemic

Mark Johnson

A beloved orangutan at the Milwaukee Zoo dies unexpectedly. The hunt for the killer turns into a medical mystery that underscores a growing threat to the human population. Of the 400 or so emerging infectious diseases identified since 1940, more than 60 percent have been zoonotic, meaning they have passed from animals to humans. Think diseases such as Zika, Ebola, SARS and Salmonella. As grantee Mark Johnson explains in this masterful piece of reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, zoonotic diseases account for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and about 2.7 million deaths each year. The direct costs from these diseases are estimated at more than $20 billion over the last decade.

Not a Huge Success

Iona Craig

White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed the recent U.S. commando raid in Yemen was a “huge success.” Grantee Iona Craig, one of the few journalists to interview witnesses at the scene of the botched operation, provides this fact-based account for The Intercept.

Justice With a Personal Touch

May Jeong

In Afghanistan, a country with few functioning institutions, grantee May Jeong reports for The Atlantic on how the nation’s new attorney general applies a personal touch to the rule of law. The results so far: mixed.