Scientists Say Warmer World Will Be a Sicker World
By Cindy Higgins, RIIL Project, ILRU
Global warming and changing climatic conditions are triggering disabling disease epidemics around the world, report ecologists and epidemiologists.
"What is most surprising is the fact that climate sensitive outbreaks are happening with so many different types of pathogens - viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites - as well as in such a wide range of hosts including corals, oysters, terrestrial plants, birds, and humans," said researcher Drew Harvell, Cornell University, about the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) study featured recently in Science.
"Climate change is disrupting natural ecosystems in a way that is making life better for infectious diseases," said epidemiologist Andrew Dobson of Princeton University.
A cholera outbreak in Bangladesh has been linked to climate change as has Rift Valley Fever that occurs particularly in parts of East Africa.
At a February 2003 seminar for science writers held in conjunction with the American Association of Science, Dobson said that many disease carriers such as mosquitoes, ticks, and rodents, as well as the viral, fungal, and bacterial pathogens are reacting to temperature changes.
Mosquitoes, for example, have fewer choices in their search for a dinner host. That loss of choice causes them to concentrate on: us.
Besides causing death--malaria kills in one day the number of people killed in one World Trade Center tower, and tuberculosis kills in one week the equivalent of passengers on three Titanics--these diseases reduce human functioning abilities, Dobson said, giving the example of the two billion people who have worms.
Dobson said that fighting these diseases will be hard: there aren't enough scientists and physicians trained in infectious disease.
"The U.S. surgeon general in 1979 said since we had cured all diseases and put a man on the moon, now it was time to focus on cancer and the heart. Bam, then HIV comes along and you realize infectious disease is still a huge problem," Dobson said.
Besides HIV funding, little research money goes toward infectious disease work and training. The National Institute of Health includes only one tropical disease in its research budget.
"We have to get serious about global change," says Dobson. "It's not only going to be a warmer world, it's going to be a sicker world."
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