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The Global Threat of (Re)emerging Diseases: Contesting the Adequacy of Biomedical Discourse and Practice

Jon Arrizabalaga

in To Fix or to Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine

Since the 1980s the world has witnessed the global emergence of new epidemic infections (HIV/AIDS being the most dramatic so far), and the reappearance of known infectious diseases, such as ... More

Since the 1980s the world has witnessed the global emergence of new epidemic infections (HIV/AIDS being the most dramatic so far), and the reappearance of known infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, malaria, and syphilis, that had seemed for some time to be under control. In the field of public health, these events have led to the designation of a new nosological category: emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Such diseases pose a growing threat to the hegemony of biomedicine, raising many questions about the adequacy of biomedical discourse and practices to meet the global challenge of infectious diseases. This chapter analyzes the construction of this new nosological category and examines the implications of (re)emerging diseases for public health, food security, and human development on a worldwide scale.Less

Future Directions

Gregory P. Cheplick and Stanley H. Faeth

in Ecology and Evolution of the Grass-Endophyte Symbiosis

Systemic endophytes of grasses provide ideal systems for testing ecological and evolutionary theory, as well as providing an important research platform for developing and improving pasture and turf ... More

Systemic endophytes of grasses provide ideal systems for testing ecological and evolutionary theory, as well as providing an important research platform for developing and improving pasture and turf grasses. Presently, most basic and applied research has been directed towards Neotyphodium-infected agronomic grasses. There is an urgent need to expand basic ecological and, especially, evolutionary studies to native grass systems and other systemic endophytes and the more ubiquitous, non-systemic endophytes. Little is understood about the effects of endophytes on host biology and reproduction, and even less about the complex effects of endophytes that change with host and endophyte genotype, host ontogeny, environment, and the presence of other interacting species. Long-term cost-benefit analyses across an array of varying biotic and abiotic factors seems like a prudent path of investigation. Studies of the coevolutionary dynamics of endophyte-host interactions are still in their infancy, yet endophyte-host interactions are ideal systems in which to test contemporary theories. There is still a lack of detailed knowledge of how the genetics of endophytes and their hosts alter interaction outcomes, especially in complex natural communities. Grass-endophyte symbioses offer tractable systems for addressing societal problems such as global environmental change, invasive species and emerging infectious diseases, restoration of degraded ecosystems, and food, fuel, and forage shortages.Less

Improving vaccines, antimicrobials, and antitoxins through research

Dorothy Margolskee

in Terrorism and Public Health: A balanced approach to strengthening systems and protecting people

This chapter describes ways to improve vaccines, antimicrobials, and antitoxins through research. It describes and discusses a number of issues, including the need for rapid diagnostic tests for ... More

This chapter describes ways to improve vaccines, antimicrobials, and antitoxins through research. It describes and discusses a number of issues, including the need for rapid diagnostic tests for several pathogens, the potential role of antitoxins, the potential post-exposure utility of vaccines, and the need for fundamental research on the viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever.Less

Recurring Revolutions? Tuberculosis Treatments in the Era of Antibiotics

Janina Kehr and Flurin Condrau

in Therapeutic Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and Social Change in the Twentieth Century

This chapter combines historical and anthropological inquiry. The authors analyze the tensions around the treatable and untreatable, the emergent and the chronic, in two distinct time frames, ... More

This chapter combines historical and anthropological inquiry. The authors analyze the tensions around the treatable and untreatable, the emergent and the chronic, in two distinct time frames, conceptualized as historical and ethnographic case studies. The first period concerns the decline and disappearance of tuberculosis (TB) from Western countries in the first half of the twentieth century, whereas the second period touches on the reappearance of TB in the wake of HIV/AIDS, multi-resistance, and globalization at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Both sections interrogate the narratives of revolution and stagnation and of exciting acuteness and boring routine, which the authors regard as significant for the relation between tuberculosis and its treatments, as well as for the ways a disease, its biomedical treatments, and public health approaches are defined, problematized, and understood in medicine and society.Less

Past Emerging Viruses

Dorothy H. Crawford

in Viruses: The Invisible Enemy

This chapter focuses on past emerging viruses. For our ancestors, it was their change in lifestyle from hunter-gatherer to farmer some 10,000 years ago that triggered an onslaught of new, emerging ... More

This chapter focuses on past emerging viruses. For our ancestors, it was their change in lifestyle from hunter-gatherer to farmer some 10,000 years ago that triggered an onslaught of new, emerging infectious diseases. The switch from the nomadic life to living in fixed communities, along with the change from hunting animals to their domestication, encouraged spillover of new viruses as well as other types of microbes. As such, the early farmers’ emerging viruses jumped from the animals they domesticated, while the cramped conditions of life in villages, and later towns, gave these viruses the opportunity to thrive in their new human host. This was the beginning of many of our acute childhood infections, so-called crowd diseases. The chapter looks at how these ancient afflictions have evolved over the intervening 10,000 years with a view to understanding how diseases like COVID-19 might evolve over time. It considers smallpox and measles, which are both highly infectious, lethal, airborne viruses, as well as polio, which is spread by faecal–oral contamination.Less

Taking Action: Evolutionary Triage

Daniel R. Brooks, Eric P. Hob Erg, and Walter A. Boeger

in The Stockholm Paradigm: Climate Change and Emerging Disease

Humans attempt to combat, mitigate, and react to diseases only after they have emerged. These reactive management policies are unsustainable in a world of climate change and its threat multipliers.

Introduction: Dengue in the Landscape

Alex M. Nading

in Mosquito Trails: "Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement"

This chapter introduces the book’s main setting, Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, a low-income city on the outskirts of Managua. It does so through a particular case history of dengue fever, showing how ... More

This chapter introduces the book’s main setting, Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, a low-income city on the outskirts of Managua. It does so through a particular case history of dengue fever, showing how dengue brought together political and ethical questions about mosquito and human behavior. The case history leads to a working definition of the “politics of entanglement,” the persistent inequalities that attend attachments between people, places, and ways of knowing. The chapter identifies the three main elements of the politics of entanglement as infrastructure, bodies, and knowledge. The politics of entanglement is linked to theory in critical medical anthropology and political ecology. Methods for studying entanglement are discussed. I use the trope of the trail—a mark on the landscape that may be anthropogenic but may also be created by a plant or animal—to call attention to the role of people and other living creatures as place-makers.Less

Conservation in the Future

Charles Perrings

in Conservation: Economics, Science, and Policy

The final chapter considers the factors likely to influence the value of species and ecosystems to individual users and the wider community in the future, including the factors likely to drive a ... More

The final chapter considers the factors likely to influence the value of species and ecosystems to individual users and the wider community in the future, including the factors likely to drive a wedge between the value of ecosystems to individual users or individual communities and to the rest of the world. It reviews environmental trends identified by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and economic trends identified by organizations such as the World Bank. Using the European Union’s subsidiarity principle as a guide, the chapter discusses the optimal scale at which to manage future conservation challenges, and the implications this has for governance. It concludes by applying the discussion to four issues of particular concern: forest conversion, the loss of landraces and crop wild relatives, marine capture fisheries, and emerging infectious zoonoses.Less

Frogs in Glass Boxes: Responses of Zoos to Global Amphibian Extinctions

Joseph R. Mendelson III

in The Ark and Beyond: The Evolution of Zoo and Aquarium Conservation

As modern zoos were evolving to substantiate their claims to be leading conservation organizations in the late twentieth century, amphibians were succumbing to conservation challenges of unimaginable ... More

As modern zoos were evolving to substantiate their claims to be leading conservation organizations in the late twentieth century, amphibians were succumbing to conservation challenges of unimaginable proportions. A previously unknown pathogenic fungus was moving among continents and, in some cases, eradicating populations and species virtually instantly. This phenomenon went mostly unnoticed until about 1990, when scientists and conservationists scrambled for answers, or even the relevant questions, and suitable responses. Amphibians have never been prominent in zoo programs or exhibits, so the coincidental timing of the upswing of conservation rhetoric from zoos and what was acknowledged as the most drastic large-scale animal conservation crisis in history created a maelstrom of confusion and controversy. Being understandably unprepared for a conservation challenge of unprecedented proportions, the response of zoos ranged from unfulfilled promises to valiant, if unsuccessful, efforts to establishment of successful programs. More broadly, the disease-driven declines of amphibians is a case study for zoos and conservationists to consider in face of the ever increasing reports of devastating emerging infectious diseases as direct-drivers of extinction in wildlife. It is clear to no one, including zoos, what are the best responses to these situations.Less