newsroom

TODAY Wednesday 7 January 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: The Great Improvement That Didn't

"By the 1960s widespread improvements in hygiene, sanitation, and mosquito control led most public health authorities to believe that we would soon conquer infectious diseases," writes Dr. Paul Epstein in the current issue of Consequences. "In the 1970s public health schools turned their attention instead to chronic ailments, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer. But the so-called 'epidemiological transition' to diseases of modernity never materialized in many developing nations."

Dr. Epstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment of the Harvard Medical School and author of our own High Five feature on Health and Global Change, tells the story of the comeback of the great pandemics.

The 1980s and 1990s have been years of resurgence for some well-known scourges: tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, and pneumonia killed more than 10 million people in 1995. Epstein cites a World Health Organization study which blames tough new bacteria which have developed resistances to standard antibiotics. When these bacteria travel around the world on jet airplanes (we live during the greatest human migrations of all time) maladies that were believed to have been beaten decades ago flare up with new virulence. Less well-known tropical diseases -- dengue fever, for example -- are also doing well, claiming record numbers of victims and spreading to new places (like the Gulf Coast of the US).

Often the most important new resistances are not those of bacterium to drug but carrier to pesticide. Mosquitoes, for example, are harder and harder to extirpate as they develop more and more defenses against poison sprays. Cases of malaria are increasing in many countries, our own included.

And then there are ecological factors, says Dr. Epstein. Loss of natural habitats and the ensuing loss of natural predators can upset the balance of eater-and-eaten in ways that are hard to predict, and often harmful to health. The decline of mosquito-eating animals in many areas is thought to have played a significant role in the malaria comeback. New diseases have emerged from the recent imbalances: Lyme disease, hantaviruses, and plague have been profiting from the absence of rodent predators.

As climate change disrupts environments at a pace too fast for many creepalong species, as high-input monocultures become the agricultural norm throughout the world, as human settlements fragment animal habitats, as the use of toxins proliferates, as poor and rich people alike down antibiotics with dour gusto -- well, we may be heading for a bit of a fall, epidemiologically speaking. You certainly don't hear as much these days of that public health optimism of the 1960s.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

Tom Turner's latest installment of "In Other News..." speaks on behalf of the crafts of propaganda, particularly as they were limned by the incomparable Richard Crossland during the Second World War. Let's get good at propaganda, Tom suggests, and let's certainly know what it looks like.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

1/6: Proactive, Shmoactive
1/5: Mediocre Landscapes and Hope for the Planet
1/2: The Greatest Environmental Cause of the Year
12/31: The Top Twelve Environment Stories of 1997
12/30: Bad Eating and Not Eating
12/29: Owning the Public Health Issue
12/23: Good Year for Vintage Climate
12/22: Save the Reefs
12/19: Mousemobile
12/18: Year of Fire
12/17: Ramblin' Man (Ramblin' Woman)
12/16: Big News on the Margins
12/15: The Hybrid As Savior
12/12: Good Week for the Dragon
12/11: Help Wanted: Unreasonable Extremists
12/10: Oh Boy! A Fight!
12/9: Running Away From It All
12/8: "What I Wouldn't Give for This War to End."
12/5: Feisty Euros at Kyoto
12/4: Beauty in the Bronx
12/3: God from Machine
12/2: Gentlemen's Bet
12/1: Public Opinion
11/26: Sperm
11/25: Sound Sound-Bite Science
11/24: Home Sweet Storage Locker
11/21: Tim Wirth's Inscrutable Adventure
11/20: Better to Receive than to Give
11/19: Wes Jackson's Problem with Agriculture
11/18: "Stay Home and Be Decent"

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.