Some may have realized that I missed posting a blog last
week. I admit, it was not until Saturday morning when I awoke in a panic that I
realized I had not written one. But I
decided to give myself some slack - I was on vacation. I was enjoying the warm weather, doing the
last minute back to school shopping and taking a bit of time for myself to
lounge in the sun while listening to the soothing sounds of the river and the
not so soothing sounds of my son and his friends playing. I also managed to get some vacation-reading
in – some that was completely mindless drivel and some like Nathan Wolfe’s The
Viral Storm, which was more educational and helped repopulate the brain cells I
lost from reading the drivel...
The Viral Storm is an easy to read overview of the
science of viruses. It talks to how
viruses and humans have evolved throughout history, how deadly viruses like
Influenza (aka Swine or Bird Flu) have almost wiped us out and why modern life
that we love so much has made us vulnerable to the threat of global pandemics. Reading it after our recent Ebola crisis
makes you realize that while Ebola is scary, there are without a doubt nastier
bugs out there, ones we have yet to hear of lurking in monkeys, bats, and other
animals that will very likely be hunted, slaughtered and eaten and without a
doubt will unleash the next “weapon” of mass depopulation.
In fact, Wolfe’s research has demonstrated the role that
hunting and eating wild game plays in introducing new diseases into the human
body. The scary truth is the more
closely related the hunter and the hunted are, the more likely a virus can
adapt to its new host and cause infection.
If that new virus can spread easily from person to person, in our modern
world we had best all look out because that new bug is just a flight, car,
train or boat ride away!
Industrial farming also increases the number of animals
and their viruses that we are exposed to and quite literally abolish historical
relationships of one animal and a few people.
Modern farming has created a web of connections between thousands of
animals and thousands of consumers and as Wolfe so eloquently articulated
“today, an average meat eater will consume bits of millions of animals during
their lifetimes.” Of course, we cannot
blame industrial farming alone. On a
global basis, most of the world’s population now live in large cities that,
from a bug’s point of view, are no different than a factory farm. Dense populations of people provide viruses
with an easy source of “fresh meat” to infect which allows viruses to improve
their ability to move quickly through a population and become more virulent,
more deadly along the way.
Wolfe also details his work in establishing networks
aimed at catching pandemics before they start.
While in its infancy, it is something that certainly is needed if we are
to survive. His closing chapter
contained statistics that certainly made me pause. “Around 8,000 people died
worldwide at the hands of terrorists between April 2001 and August 2002, a
period that included the 9/11 attacks. Between April 2009 and August 2012, more
than 18,000 died as a result of H5N1. Shouldn't we spend at least as much on
preventing pandemics as we spend in the war on terror?”
Bugging Off!
Nicole
