Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
domestication. devastation.
through our domestication and use of animals,
devastating human diseases have emerged
estimated no. of people
who
what
affected over the last century
sheep and goats
measles
150 million deaths
camels
smallpox
300 million deaths
ducks
human influenza
100 million deaths
pigs
whooping cough
25 million deaths
water buffalos
leprosy
750 million cases
cattle
common cold
75 billion cases
chickens
highly pathogenic avian influenza
300 deaths
great apes (for bushmeat)
HIV/AIDS
25 million deaths
civets
SARS
1,000 deaths
Most of human infectious disease in general originally came
from animals, starting 10,000 years ago with their domestication.
When we brought animals into the barnyard, they brought their
diseases with them.
When we first domesticated ruminants such as sheep and goats,
we also domesticated their rinderpest virus, which is thought to
have turned into human measles. Now thought of as a relatively
benign disease, over the last century measles has killed more than
100 million people worldwide. In a sense, all those deaths can be
traced back a few hundred generations to the taming of the first
ruminants.
Smallpox likely came from camelpox. We domesticated pigs and
got whooping cough, and domesticated ducks and got influenza.
Before then, no one likely ever got the flu. Leprosy likely came from
water buffalo; the cold virus may have come from cattle. Until domes-
tication, the common cold was only, presumably, common to them.
