CDCWow!

This week's story about the guy from the US carrying a particularly nasty strain of tuberculosis has reminded me of an old bugbear of mine.

There have been regular updates given by the US Centers for Disease Control. As long as I've been visiting Atlanta I've been wanting to visit CDC and take the tour. Maybe you can blame a morbid curiosity in the all-conquering nature of bacteria and viruses, or possibly just a rose-tinted glamour resulting from having seen Outbreak one too many times.

There would be guided tours of galleries overlooking labs; a "Know your virus" interactive exhibit; a "Beat the Pathogen" game (which I'd have to give a little more thought to but would definitely involve dressing up in a biohazard suit); and a gift shop selling all sorts of stuff from disease-themed movies (Outbreak, 28 Days Later) and music (Anthrax, anyone?) to t-shirts saying "I went on the CDC tour and all I got was this lousy rhinovirus", "Herpes is for life, not just for Christmas", "TB or not TB? That is the question" and other such vaguely witty slogans.

But Jen swore that they didn't have a visitor's centre. Why, she asked, would they want to open that kind of thing up to the public? And anyway, what kind of sicko would actually want to go?

So for the past few years I've been banging on occasionally at anyone who'll listen about how the CDC's missing a trick.

Except it turns out they're not.

I know it won't live up to my expectations, but I'm all the happier just to know it exists.