Talk:Pathogen

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 August 2020 and 25 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Savvyvans, Lauren Cardona.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:09, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
It would be really nice to have a numeric definition here. IE, is this the fraction of organisms which develop a contagious infection after being exposed to a certain amount of the virus, or what? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.166.97.6 (talk) 12:45, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Can't be specific. While a large number of organisms can cause illness, others take very few. Botulism, for example, has such a powerful toxin that it can give you the disease without a large number of organisms. By contrast, you can have millions of bacteria in your mouth and not get sick from them.MartinezMD (talk)

infectious vs non-infectious
Is there a distinction between infectious vs non-infectious pathogens? The latter being e.g. poisons or radiation? AFAIK a pathogen just has to induce an illness and does not have to be infectious. Semsi Paco Virchow (talk) 21:07, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain you're thinking of agents. Pathogens are infectious agents that are most often organisms themselves. Prions kind of skirt this definition, and as such some call them infectious particles. Yang573 (talk) 01:45, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

microorganism
In what sense is a prion a microorganism? It's just a piece of protein. Unchartered (talk) 08:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Merged Pathogenicity
I decided to bring over that article's contents (mostly) because neither of these has very much. I did edit it somewhat before and during the merge; feel free to second-guess, or better yet, just add more because this needs so much. From the merged talk page there, I've copied the following (deactivating duplicated wikiproject tags): Wnt (talk) 17:32, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

[WPMED |class=Stub|importance=Mid] [WikiProject Micro]

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Working on Article Structure
Hey all, I'm in a wiki editing class for scientists and I've identified this article as one that could use a lot of work. I'm hoping to make significant edits to the structure and content over the next couple of weeks. Happy to chat about the changes as they happen. -Simplebiologist (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Linking to germ in the lead
Hi, per WP:SELFRED I'm not sure that "germ" should be linked in the lead. Germ is a DAB page, and if one were to choose the one that is correct in this context "Germ (microorganism)", they would end up back at pathogen. Per MOS:BOLDAVOID, "germ" should not be both bolded and linked. Since it redirects here, I think the preference should be for it to be bolded or plainface, but not linked. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:26, 22 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I understand and agree with the policies. Germ, in this article however, was/is linking to the germ theory of disease, and not germ DAB. It is providing a link to an informative history of how pathogens were first understood. MartinezMD (talk) 23:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Additional pathogen categories
Parasites and PM are also pathogen categories, someone please find the relevant source, I don’t have my chemical toxicology text handy from graduate work, but noting here for improvement. 184.88.18.214 (talk) 13:33, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Parasites as pathogens
The article does not say parasites are not pathogens. It says "(a pathogen) is any organism or agent that can produce disease. It goes on to say "small animals, such as helminths and insects, can also cause or transmit disease. However, these animals are usually, in common parlance, referred to as parasites rather than pathogens", which is accurate. Could the IP who is engaged in an edit war please desist and discuss any changes to the Lead here. Graham Beards (talk) 07:14, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

PS. This article is a useful source: - Graham Beards (talk) 07:23, 14 August 2022 (UTC)