Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
“During the past decades, many previously
unknown human infectious diseases have
emerged from animal reservoirs, from
agents such as human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV), Ebola virus, West Nile virus,
Nipah virus and Hanta virus. In fact, more
than three quarters of the human diseases
that are new, emerging or re-emerging at the
beginning of the 21st century are caused by
pathogens originating from animals or from
products of animal origin.”
—World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, and World
Organization for Animal Health (WHO/FAO/
OIE). 2004. Report of the WHO/FAO/OIE joint
consultation on emerging zoonotic diseases.
By the mid-twentieth century, the “age of infectious disease”
was thought to be over. We had penicillin, we had conquered po-
lio, and we had eradicated smallpox. In 1948, the U.S. Secretary
of State pronounced that the conquest of all infectious diseases
was imminent. Twenty years later, victory was declared by the
U.S. Surgeon General: “The war against diseases has been won.”
Even Nobel Laureates were seduced into the heady optimism. One
Nobel-winning virologist wrote in the 1962 text
Natural History of
Infectious Disease
that “the most likely forecast about the future
of infectious disease is that it will be very dull.”
But then something changed. Starting around 1975, after de-
cades of declining infectious disease mortality, the number of
Americans dying from infectious diseases started to go back up.
Over the last thirty years, more than thirty new diseases have
