The CDC says it’s killing more people than AIDS, emphysema, or Parkinson’s disease—Can we stop the new strains of Staph aureus bacteria? Our topic today is MRSA. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an estimate of 94,000 patients developing MRSA infections in the US over the course of 2005. Of this number, nearly 19,000 people died, a stunning mortality ratio of one in five. Our guest today is Dr. Michael Otto, a microbiologist from the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, a part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In a recent paper in the journal Nature Medicine, Otto and his colleagues say they’ve found what they think is the mechanism that makes MRSA so virulent.