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Plague mice on the lam in Jersey

Jon Skillings Editorial director
Jon Skillings is an editorial director at CNET, where he's worked since 2000. A born browser of dictionaries, he honed his language skills as a US Army linguist (Polish and German) before diving into editing for tech publications -- including at PC Week and the IDG News Service -- back when the web was just getting under way, and even a little before. For CNET, he's written on topics from GPS, AI and 5G to James Bond, aircraft, astronauts, brass instruments and music streaming services.
Expertise AI, tech, language, grammar, writing, editing Credentials
  • 30 years experience at tech and consumer publications, print and online. Five years in the US Army as a translator (German and Polish).
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Jon Skillings

Camus, Camus, wherever you are.

In an incident that could have been part of a lost chapter in "The Plague," Albert Camus' existentialist take on how people respond to a nasty bout of infectious disease, three plague-infected mice have gone missing from a bioterror research facility in Newark, N.J. Researchers lost track of the bubonic rodents more than two weeks ago, according to a report Friday in the Star-Ledger.

Don't panic just yet, however. Experts tell the newspaper that even if the mice did escape the Public Health Research Institute, the danger to the general populace is--probably--minimal. Still, the story points to broader concerns about what it depicts as a distressingly unregulated building boom in biological-warfare research centers across the country.