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Image Credit: Luke Jerram

H/T to io9

With the swine-flu pandemic ramped up to a national emergency on Friday, it seems a fitting moment to discuss Luke Jerram’s virology art, which includes the stunning depiction of H1N1 above.

Mesmerizingly beautiful and painstakingly researched, Jerram’s sculptures of notoriously deadly microbes also function as wry commentary: they target both the sensationalism of popular medical reportage as well as the claims to objectivity that underlie scientific visualizations.