A landmark study examining the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has confirmed that disease outbreaks may, in fact, require diseases to spread from person to person in order to constitute an outbreak. The finding, which researchers say is already drawing attention from the global health community, appears to suggest that viral transmission occurs through a process involving actual viruses.

"What makes this finding particularly striking is that we've observed a consistent pattern where areas with more infected individuals tend to experience higher rates of infection," said Dr. Helena Vandermeer, Professor of Epidemiological Philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Disease Theory in Brussels. "The study, which examined 847 confirmed cases over a period of eight months, is consistent with the possibility that contagious diseases may actually be contagious."

The implications of this research could reshape how public health officials approach outbreak management. According to the paper, published in the Journal of Obvious Medical Findings, regions that successfully contained the virus implemented strategies that appeared to focus on preventing the virus from spreading. A researcher not involved in the study, Dr. Marcus Chen, Chair of Theoretical Infection Studies at Oxford, told reporters that the findings "raise troubling questions about our fundamental assumptions regarding how diseases work."

"The real question," Vandermeer told me, "is whether we've been thinking about outbreaks all wrong, or whether outbreaks have been thinking about us."