Eco Science - Eight - Pandemics and Modified Climate Induced Diseases

8/14/2019 Eco Science - Eight - Pandemics and Modified Climate Induced Diseases

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ECOSCIENCE:POPULATION,RESOURCES,ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICHSTANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICHSTANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDRENUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANYSan Francisco


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amid pleasant surroundings to life in such a horribleplace. The aesthetic poverty of U.S. cities and suburbshas reached such a degree that most citizens are a ware ofit. Newspapers are replete with stories describing slums,ghettos, rats, trash, and garbage. This is one of thereasons wh y weekends and holidays invariably bring on amass exodus from the cities. Unfortunately, frontierhabits of thoughtless littering and defacement seemlikely to reduce attractive rural areas and state andnational parks to sim ilar levels of ugliness.Studies with young animals and indirect evidencefrom young children indicate that the richness of thesensory environm ent early in life influences the extent oflater mental development. Sensory stimulation in yo ungrats resulted in measurably larger brain sizes in adult-hood than in their sensorily deprived litter-mates, and itaffected their learning and problem-solving abilities aswell. Children wh o have been exposed to a variety ofsights, sounds, and experiences when they are very youngmay learn faster an d later on be more likely to developattitudes of inquiry and exploration.Yet cities, once a rich source of varied sensoryexperiences, are becoming m ore monotonous and dism al.Modern u rban development programs flatten blocks at atimeblocks that once included a mixture of buildingsof different ages an d stylesand then replace them withconcrete monoliths that lack aesthetic quality. Thevariety of sounds, at least some of w hich were pleasing tohear, in sm aller towns and on farms, is also coming to bereplaced by an incessant din of traffic and construction.

A zoologist with an interest in environmental psy-chology, A. E. Parr of the Am erican Museum of NaturalHistory, has written that city children of a generation ortwo ago spent m uch of their time exploring and partici-pating in the activities of the city, while today childrenare confined to dreary schoolrooms, their hom es, and thelocal park. Poorer ones may play in the streets, and in thisrespect perhaps they are luckier. Bu t ma ny of today's citychildren are being deprived of firsthand knowledge abo utthe city they live in and how the social organiza tionswithin it function, which creates a sort of alienationfrom their surroundings. At the same time their sur-roundingsarebecoming more and more monotonous andless attractive. Children's urges toward inquisitiveness,

exploration, and ingenuity (qu alities that will be desper-ately needed in the next generation) may thus be stifledoutside the schools as well as in them.223

Suburbs are often better than the cities in aestheticqualities and sensory stimulation, but not invariably so.Although th e environment is usually more natural an dincludes trees and gardens, many suburbs tend to reduceeverything to a common denominator. All the houses in agiven area are similar, if not identical, and so are th egardens, parks, and shopping centers. Each modernreal-estate developm ent is generally inhabited by peopleof about the same age, educational level, type of employ-ment, an d economic status. There is not much opporrc-nity for children to meet people whose points of v i e differ from their own or those of their parents. Althoughthe children may be freer to explore in the suburbs thanin the city, there is sometimes even less of interest to findthere. The absence of men most of the time may resu lt man even greater alienation of youngsters (and wives a;well) from the functioning society. Of course, televisionmay compensate somewhat for the lack of sensory ar.csocial variety in children's lives, but it does no t encour-ag e inquisitiveness or offer opportunities for exploration.ingenuity, or direct experience. On the contrary, itmayfoster passiveness and a tendency to regard life a ? =spectator sport.

THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENTToday the population of Homo sapiens is the largest in thehistory of the species, it has the highest averag e density.and it contains a record number of undernourished andmalnourished people. The population, or rather a smallbut important segment of it, is also unprecedented!vmobile. People are in continu al motion around the globe.and they are able to move from continent to continent inhours. Th e potential for a worldwide epidemic (pan-demic) has never been greater, but people's awareness ofthis threat has probably never been smaller. Contrary :cpopular belief, "medical science" has definitely no ;conquered epidemic disease, as recent experience with

22iA. E. Parr, The five ages of urbanity.


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influenza, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, and Lassa feverhave shown.22 4

Th e behavior of viruses is not completely understood,but it is known that the spontaneous development ofhighly lethal strains of human viruses and the invasion ofhumanity by extremely dangerous animal viruses arepossible. It is also known that crowding increases thechances for development of a virus epidemic. Should,say, an especially virulent strain of flu appear, it isdoubtful that the United States an d other developedcountries could produce enough vaccine fast enough tosave most of their populations. Needless to say, theproblem would be even more severe in the LDCs.Certainly, little effort could be made to save most ofhumanity. Consider, for example, the difficulty theUnited States had in coping with the mild Asian fluepidemic of 1968.It was not possible to manufactureenough vaccine to protect most of the population, and theinfluenza death rate in 1968 wa s more than 4 times ashigh as that of 1967. Only 613 deaths were attributed toflu, but society paid a high price for the disease in extramedical care and loss of working hours. That the numberof deaths was not higher was due primarily to therelatively mild character of the virus, rather than tomodern medicine. More recently, the swine flu fiasco of1976-1977 certainly did not build confidence that publichealth machinery will be able to cope competently withfuture epidemic threats.

In 1967 an outbreak of a previously unknown diseaseoccurred among a shipment of vervet monkeys that hadbeen imported into laboratories in Marburg, Germany,and in Yugoslavia. This severe, hemorrhagic diseaseinfected 25 laboratory workers who came into contactwith the monkeysand their tissues. Seven of those peopledied. Five secondary infections occurred in individualswho came into contact with the blood of the originalpatients;all of those individuals survived. Humanity wasextremely fortunate that the first infections of Homo

224L. K. Altman, Hong Kong flu is affecting millions in wide areasaround world, Ne w York Times, January IS , 1970;H. Schwartz,Influenza: Yes you really had it; and H. Schwartz, Cholera now spreadingto remote regions: Eruption is the most widespread since 1899pandemic,Ne w York Times, September 26,1971; B. Dixon, Typhoid bacilli learn anew trick; J. Lederberg, Yellow fever still is a menace, J. G. Fuller, Fever:Th e h u n t or a nev) killer virus; T. Monath et al., Lassa virus isolation fromMastomys natalensis rodents during an epidemic in Sierra Leone.

sapiens by Marburg virus occurred around laboratorieswhere the nature of the threat was quickly recognized,and the disease contained (it was not susceptible toantibiotics). If it had escapedinto the human populationat large, and if the disease had retained its virulencejasjL-

frnm person to an ppiHprpic resulting inr>f r,r ,fr\ frji1i"ns of deaths might

hay_accurred. Among well-fed laboratory workers withexpert medical care, 7 out of 30patients died.225 Amonghungry people with little or no medical care, mortalitywould be much higher. The infected monkeys passeddirough London airport in transit to the laboratories. Ifthe virus had infected airport personnel, it could havespread around the world before anyone realized whatwa shappening. In addition, it is hardly reassuring thatinfection of laboratory workers with viruses is a rathercommon occurrence, and the potential virulence ofpossible "escapees" from labs is increasing.226

The highly mechanized society of the United States isalso extremely vulnerableto disruption by such events aspower failures, floods, and snowstorms. What wouldhappen if the nation were confronted with an epidemicthat kept masses of sick people from work and caused theuninfected to stay home or flee the cities because of theirfear of infection? This might slow or even stop the spreadof the disease, but hunger, cold (in the winter), andmanyother problems would soon develop as the services ofsociety ceased to operate. Almost total breakdown hasbeen known to occur in much less complex societies thanthe U.S. in the face of the black death breakdown thatoccurred among people fa r more accustomed to a shortlife, hardship, disease, and death than the population ofthe Western world today.227 The panic may well beimagined if Americans were to discover that "modernmedical science" either had no cure for a disease ofepidemic proportions, or had insufficient doses of thecure for everyone. The disease itself would almostcertainly impede the application of any ameliorating

-'-5R.E.Kisslinget al.Agentofdisease contracted from green monkeys.More recent cases contracted in parts of Africa (outside laboratories) havebeen reported, including several hundred deaths. (New outbreak ofMarburg disease, New Scientist, October 28, 1976 p. 199.)226For example, R.P.Hanson, et al., Arbovirus infections of laboratoryworkers; N. Wade, Microbiology: Hazardous profession faces newuncertainties.2W. L. Langer, The black death.


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measures. Distribution of vaccines, for instance, wouldbe difficult if airlines, trains, and trucks were notrunning.

In many parts of the world, public-health conditionsare developing that have a high potential for disaster.The rats that live on stored grain in India have renewedthe specter of a major outbreak of bubonic plague.Nitrate pollution of water is creating conditions in whichdangerous soil organisms are brought into contact withhuman beings for the first time. The organism that hasrecently caused cases of a fatal meningitis has beenidentified as a soil-dwelling amoeba.228 It may be just thefirst of many such agents to appear seemingly fromnowhere.

Irrigation projects in the tropicsand subtropicsaroundthe world are spreatjipft the conditions that promote the

iparasitic diseas^schis tosomiosis (bilharzia) } which, to-gether withTmalarufe is one of the two most prevalentspfinm diseases on Earth.229 The broadcast use ofchemotherajjy,and antibiotics has created a seriousmedical problem through tbf introduction of resistanceI in_ bacteria juid other parasitesjjvlodification of the^climate wouid~alsp inevitably influence disease patterns^\for example, the length of time viruses remain infectious

f is in part a function of humidity. A trend toward dryingwould encourage some, whereas others would thrive inincreased rn";smrp .It is s* 'l*r*prr(*d t_in addition, thatWeather changes can trigger epidemics^30';

As if the threat of a natural pandemic were notgruesome enough, mere is always the threat of biologicalwarfare or of an accidental escape of lethal agents from abiological warfare laboratory or, conceivably, from alaboratory engaged in genetic engineering experiments ~~ x

r(see inaterial on recombinant DNA research in Chapter^ Ii4}jAlthough most laypeople have long been afraid of Jthermonuclear war, they are just beginning to grasp thecolossal hazard posed by chemical and biological warfare(CBW). Any country with one or two well-trainedmicrobiologists and even a modest budget can build itsown biological doomsday weapons. Constructing lethal

228J. H. Callicott, Amebic meningo encephalitis.229K. S. Warren, Precarious odyssey of an unconquered parasite; N.Ansari, Epidemiology and con trol of schistosomiasis .250K. E. F. Watt, Ecology and resource manage me nt , McGraw-Hill,New York, 1968 p. 162 ff.

viruses against which there is little or no resistance inhuman populations can easily be done in theory; it mayalready have been done in practice. There were at onetime rumors of the development by the American CBWestablishment of a pneumonic rabies, one that, instead ofbeing transmitted by bite, is transmitted in the same wayas the common cold: from person to person via exhaleddroplets. This is certainly possible, since under specialconditions (such as those that sometimes occur in cavesfull of rabid rats) rabies appears to have been transmittedthrough the air. Such a disease would be a disastrouslyeffective weapon if it were transmitted by infectedindividuals before symptoms appear, since once they doappear, rabies is (with one notable recent exception) 100percent fatal. Other possibilities for lethal agents aremanyfor example, anthrax, which even in its "natural"state can be transmitted by contaminated aerosols?plague, tularemia, Q-fever, and encephalitis, to name afe w 23 1 disseminated in their natural forms or in theform of special "hot" strains that are drug-resistant orsuperlethal. Besides direct assaults on human beings-overt or covert attacks on anation's food supply might b;made by introducing plant diseases. The more crowded ipopulation is, and the smaller its per-capita foodsup-plies, the better a target it would be for a biologicalwarfare attack.

Why would nations develop such weapons? For tii-esame reason they develop others. They hope to immur.:z;or otherwise protect their own populations and tfcsavoid a biological backlash. These weapons have sspecial appeal for small and poor powers, which x=themselves threatened by larger, richer ones and wnicalack the funds or the expertise to develop nuclearweapons.232Chemical-biological weapons may never be used, butthat does not rule out the possibility of an accident. Viru>:laboratories, especially, are notoriously unsafe. By 196".some 2700 laboratory workers had become accidentallyinfected with viruses transmitted by insects, and 107 haddied.233 Their deaths were caused by just one group

2JI F. M. LaForce et al, Epidemiologicstudy of a fatal case of inanthrax;J. Lederberg, Swift biological advance can be bent to gsacciit2i2M. Meselson, Behind the Nixon policy for chemical and biologiaiwarfare.233Hanson,et al,Arbovirus infections.


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of viruses. Fatal accidents occur in laboratories wherework is done on other kinds of viruses, as well as othermicroorganisms. The inability of government CBWagencies to avoid accidents wa s made clear by the SkullValley, Utah, CBW disaster of 1968 in which manythousands ofsheep were poisoned when a chemical agent"escaped,"234 and by the possible escape of VenezuelanEquine Encephalitis from the Dugway, Utah, provingground in 1967. Congressman Richard D. McCarthy ofNew York announced in 1969 that CBW agents werebeing transported around the country in small containerson commercial airliners!

In 1969 President Nixon announced the unilateralrenunciation by the United States of the use of biologicalwarfare, even in retaliation.23 5 He directed that the stocksof biological agentsbe destroyed and that further workon. defenses against biological weapons be transferredfrom the Department of Defense to the Department ofHealth, Education and Welfare. Destruction of U.S.biological warfare materials wa s systematically carriedout in 1970 and 1971 although in 1975 it was discoveredthat the Central Intelligence Agency had not destroyedsome toxins in its possession.

234P. M. Boffey, 6000 sheep stricken near CBW center.2S5M.Meselson, Chemical and biologicalweapons, Scientific American,May 1970

Some level of research might be continuing clandes-tinely in the United States (although the possibilityseems remote), and it would be a simple matter for afuture administration quickly to reestablish biologicalwarfare capability. Indeed, with the rapidly increasingability of biologists to manipulate the genetics of micro-organisms, the possibilities for creating deadly agentsseem endless.235 Furthermore, there is little sign that theU.S. action has led to the end of work on biologicalweapons elsewhere. Biological warfare laboratories arepotential sources of a man-made "solution" to thepopulation explosion. It is essential that some way befound to block all further work on biological weaponsthe risk for humanity is simply too great.

It should be clear now that humanity is creating anenormous array of hazards that directly threaten thehealth and welfare of all people. Unfortunately many ofthese hazards are poorly understood, and many un-doubtedly remain unrecognized at present. The nextchapter shows that the level of indirect threats to humanwelfare is just as high and the level of understandingjust as low.

2S6P. Berg et al., Potential biohazardsof recombiningDNA molecules.

Recommended for Further ReadingCairns, John. 1975. Th e cancer problem. Scientific American, November. A superbsemi-popular review of environmental carcinogenesis.Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Annual. Env ironmental qual ity . Government

Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Extensive data and discussion on recent measuredlevels of air and water pollution across the United States, aswell as special topics inenergy, land use, transportation, radiation, and environmental legislation andregulation.

Huddle, N.; M. Reich; and N. Stiskin. 1975. Island o f dreams: Env i r onm e n ta l crisis in Japan .Autumn Press, New York. Well-documented and illustrated survey of the seriousenvironmental problems of one of the world's most intensely industrial nations.

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