Humans Making Wildlife Sick
Eurek Alert
17 February 2006
Mark Lewis
Whether it's monkeys and AIDS or mosquitoes and the West Nile Virus, we're used to thinking of wildlife as reservoirs for emerging infectious human diseases. But a Canadian mathematical biologist says that it's time that we turned the tables – as often as not, it's humans that are making the wildlife sick, often to our own detriment.
It's a 180-degree turn in perspective that Dr. Mark Lewis says is critical to our understanding of emerging infectious diseases of both wildlife and humans. And, he says, in the case of at least one ocean-based disease outbreak, biology and math are proving to be powerful allies in helping stem the growing tide of an ocean plague.
"With emerging infectious diseases of wildlife today there's almost always some human component," say Dr. Lewis, an NSERC-funded mathematical ecologist in the mathematics and statistics department at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Thirty-eight pathogens have emerged in the past 25 years; experts say more will make leap
20 February 2006
A.J. Hostetler
ST. LOUIS -- Diseases that originate in animals increasingly threaten human health and lives. In the past quarter-century, 38 infectious pathogens have emerged, most from animals and capable of easily and quickly adapting. And scientists expect more to arrive at a rate of one or two per year.
The 38 pathogens, which include HIV, SARS, Ebola, mad-cow disease and now the notorious avian flu, are among the more than 1,400 that can infect and sicken humans. As recently catalogued by epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, they range from viruses, bacteria, parasites and protozoa to fungi.
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