Subscription Center
Mar 27, 2009 04:05 PM | 1
Bubonic plague. AIDS. Yellow fever. Some of the greatest scourges mankind has ever faced – and those that may yet spark a pandemic, such as bird flu – all originated as infectious agents in animals that then made the jump into human beings. It’s no accident that close contact between man and rats in medieval towns led to the Black Death, and that people hunting primates in the African bush provided an avenue for AIDS to spread throughout the world.
What if scientists could identify the next killer bacteria or virus before it struck humans? Nathan Wolfe writes about how this early detection may be possible in the April issue of Scientific American. Wolfe is a professor of biology at Stanford University and director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, an effort to take stock of animal diseases in hotbeds of human-animal proximity – the jungles of Africa and southeast Asia, for example – and to monitor local people for what germs they carry that came from the wild.
In this video from February’s Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference, Wolfe explains how the hunting of primates in Africa for their bushmeat by the poverty-stricken represents a prime way for new diseases to cross over. After all, primates are humankind’s closest relative, so what infects an ape has a strong chance of also taking hold in a person.
Image Credit: Laurie Santos / National Center for Biotechnology Information
Tags:
pandemic,
nathan wolfe,
aids,
TED
More News Blog:
Next: Simply symbolic or smart environmentalism: Earth Hour approaches
Previous: Space shuttle lands safely in Florida
See what we're tweeting about
dbiello look to the past for the future RT @Revkin: A Populated Park (Adirondacks) and Conservation in the Anthropocene http://t.co/iAk94qWgj6 dbiello you know what says Anthropocene like almost nothing else? water http://t.co/kJnRXw3VgQ
notscientific Under new psychiatric guidebook we might all be labelled mad http://t.co/mM6CpH1zTh
Deadline: Jul 25 2013
Reward: Varies
This challenge provides an opportunity for Solvers to build a web-based or mobile “app” to explore data relationships in scholarly conte
Deadline: Jun 30 2013
Reward: $1,000,000 USD
This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and&
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
1 Comments
Add CommentYou know, I was thinking last night: What this economy needs is a good pandemic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery cloud has a silver lining. :)