Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Rx for Survival: The Forgotten Link Between Health and Wealth

Globally nations have begun to promote an increase in aid beginning with the Millennium Development Project, though little action has actually been taken since.  According to Adam Smith the government has three main duties: providing for its own defense, development of a justice system, and the construction and maintenance of public facilities and services.  Britain was the first to really get the building of public works aspect with its construction of the sewage and water system, which put a stop to the cholera epidemic that swept the European continent and Britain in the 19^th century.  The Asiatic cholera had decimated the port towns of Germany and Russia, having proceeded up the Caspian from India in previous years.  Cholera was a disease alike none other than had been seen before in the Isles; it was a quick killer, acting at a furious pace and spreading quickly.  During the epidemic nearly half of those who became infected died.  It first appeared in the port town of Sunderland, which would later order the port closed and the city quarantined.  Locals, denying its existence, revolted against the quarantine.  Only six months later more than 20,000 throughout England had died from the cholera that had spread from Sunderland.  It took much time and work, but thanks to the efforts of Edwin Chadwick and John Snow it was proven to the powers that be that the disease was transmitted through the water, specifically the water which was becoming contaminated by the sewage.  They proposed to Parliament the construction of a great water and sewage system.  Though they had sufficiently proven that source of the illness was not that the people were poor and bad off, it was that the conditions they were forced in to – poor housing and sanitation – was only making things worse, Parliament did not act until the stench of the open sewers forced them to evacuate the Parliament building.  The construction of the system was perhaps the most expensive public works project in the world’s history at the time, but the results were instantaneous with the cholera epidemic ceasing.  After this the rest of the industrial world soon followed suit in their public works efforts.  The wellness of the nations created a huge economic boom.  The link between health and disease prevention and the economy was lost after the Second World War.  After WWII the World Bank was created with the motif that if a company is going to grow economically, then it is required to have great capital for investment in industry, transportation, and business.  From this idea it was expected that the leading nations would aid the poorer nations with copious capital enabling them to pull themselves up.  The idea of human capital, the health and wealth of the people, was overlooked in the formation of these development projects.  Too much money had been dedicated to building roads and factors and not enough to the health of the population. 

Investing in Health

With the 1993 publication of Investing in Health by the World Bank, the idea of investing in the health and education of the people as a way to stimulate economic growth in the poor nations of the world was relit.  Much of the progress which humanity has made is due to the creation and distribution of wealth, but health and wellbeing plays a large part as well.  The easiest way for governments of poor nations to improve the health of its citizens is to spend less money on the bigger, more ineffective measures like hospitals and to focus more on smaller services such as immunizations and prevention combined with clinics.  The economic-health link has been restated with data collected that shows, all other things being equal between similar nations, the country with a longer life span will have an economic increase of .3 to .5 percent in addition each year.  A healthier population is more productive and misses less time from work due to illness, often strive for higher education or knowledge, save and invest money for old age, and has less children as a whole.  Recently a trend has developed to shift from the old ways of analysis, the Gross Domestic Product, to newer statistics such as full income and DALY.  The full income includes a figure for life expectancy to the data set, while the DALY is the disability-adjusted life year, which allows for a measure of those between health and death, where before there was none.  The central issues for why investment into human capital is necessary are that without assistance these poorer countries could become trapped in a situation that they could not revive themselves from, disease is the greatest barrier to economic growth, and the simplest or most easily treated diseases are the ones which wreak the most havoc.  The failure of poorer nations is best forecasted by partial democracy regimes and most notably high rates of infant mortality.  Human health is a great issue for national and international security and stability and as such needs to be addressed financially in order to avoid catastrophe. 

If Not Now, When?

The Global Fund, recently created, is a new type of aid organization: it collects funds from donor nations and private parties and gives them out as grants, not as loans which can cause a burden on the receiving nation.  It analyzes the proposal projects, developed within the nations themselves, monitors the spending of the project’s funds, and measures the efficiency of the projects.  The Global Fund is what new aid organizations should use as a template for their activity.  Since the end of World War II, specifically the end of the Marshall Reconstruction Plan, foreign aid given by the United States has fallen from 3 percent of the GDP to .16 percent, though many U.S. citizens believed that we were spending much more.  According to a 2001 study by the WHO currently the world is spending about $6 billion on aid, while it sees that $27 billion is the minimum to cover the most basic of necessities.  This increase would only be about .1 percent of the GDPs of the world’s wealthier nations.  The nations of the world have agreed that more money is needed, but have not acted as such.  The major nations need to commit to large sums of money for aid purposes and the world’s aid agencies need to be reformed and made more transparent.  The most recent globalization is at a point of strife; if action is not taken soon against the plagues of the poorer nations, it could spell disaster just as the globalizations of the 19^th century led to World War I and the failure to address those same issues led to the re-ignition of the European fire that was World War II.

Conclusion

Studies and research has shown that health aid projects can be successful.  The projects must be large, national or global in scale, address major public health problems, with the effects being obvious, be very cost-effective over a long time period.  It is possible to achieve success in even the most poor of nations, regardless of the corruption in government.  The governments, while poor, are still very important in the utilization and creation of health means.  Technology and modern medicine is great, however the simplest of ideas can create a great change in people’s wellbeing.  The governments of poor nations and nongovernmental organizations can work together on projects of their own without the assistance of donor nations. 

 Readings above may have been drawn from the following sources:

Six Modern Plagues and How We are Causing Them, Mark Jerome Walters; Shearwater Books, 2003, ISBN 155963992X

Life Support, The Environment and Human Health, Michael McCally, editor, MIT Press, 2002, ISBN 0-262-63257-8

Rx for Survival,  Philip Hilts, Pengquin Books.  ISBN 0-7394-6974-6

Emerging Infectious Diseases,  Stuart A. Hill, Pearson Eductation Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings.  ISBN 0-8053-3955-8

Under the Weather:  Climate, Ecosystems and Infectious Disease, National Research Council, National Academy Press.  ISBN 0-309-07278-6

This article originally written December 8th, 2008 for OU IPE 3913 - Human Health, Disease, and the Environment.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Under the Weather: Key Findings and Recommendations

            Many infectious diseases are influenced by weather and climate change as can be seen by the varying distribution of different diseases.  Temperature, precipitation, and humidity directly influence the behavior of diseases and their carriers.  Other factors including government health services, clean water and properly maintained sewage, population variations and travel, as well as land use can affect diseases.  Many models for studying the dynamics of disease have been developed, however they are not intended to be used as predictive or early warning systems.  It is not currently known for certain what impact global climate change could have on disease: while global warming could alter the range of current diseases, other factors such as improved housing, sanitation, and public health systems could offset any negative impacts from climate change.  New diseases may emerge from the increased rate of evolution in pathogens due to climate change, though this is highly uncertain.  It is an extremely slippery slope when attempting to extrapolate the data from one time and region to a larger scale; global climate change may have an effect on regional or seasonal climate patterns that is unforeseen.  The ever-increasing technological backing will only help to increase the accuracy and speed with which models and predictive systems can be developed. 

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Under the Weather: Toward the Development of Disease Early Warning Systems

Until now there has been very little progress made in the development of early warning systems for infectious disease.  However, just like weather forecasts, earlier warnings are usually much less certain.  The simplest and most used warning system is the use of sentinel animals in regions of high risks: these practices give highly predictive results but leave officials with very little reaction time for prevent further spread of disease.  The best method to be used is through ecological observation and climate forecasts issuing disease watches in order to minimize its transmission.  These watches can be used to determine which areas need to be most carefully surveyed for disease outbreaks, much like watches and warnings are used in the informing of communities on the potential of severe weather in an area.  Early warning systems should be used as devices which will enable national and local institutions as well as individuals to make decisions regarding a potential threat and to improve the coordination between them.  An early warning systems consists of watches and warnings about a particular risk, combined with vulnerability assessments which determine which groups are most susceptible to a disease, and risk analysis which will help determine the potential fallout of a disease on an area or group.  A good system must end with a response strategy and public communication system to quickly inform the public about the risks, potential outcomes, how best to be prepared.  The systems need make use of the epidemiological surveillance systems that are currently in use and follow a standard method of practice and allow for quick analysis and dissemination of information.  Up until now most surveillance methods have focused on the particular effect and end result of a disease, but need to include changes in vector populations which may employ using sentinel animals for analysis.  The systems will need to make use of new remote-sensing technologies for the analysis of ecology.  The vulnerability assessment is a description of how sensitive a population is to a particular disease and should be combined with surveillance systems thereby allowing the development of control strategies.  Risk analysis provides the probability that a particular hazard will affect an area or population.  Usually the development of scientific prediction methods greatly outpaces the development of warning systems which use this information; from this response plans need to be developed which consider the costs and potential pitfalls of possible response plans for local communities.  The people and organizations disseminating the system information need to have good credibility and trust by the persons within the community and must be sure to properly explain and educate the public on the risks in order to prevent overreaction and panic. 

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Under the Weather: Temporal and Spatial Scaling

Though climate varies naturally over time, recent global warming is of great concern.  The many parts of an area’s ecology such as soil fertility, species variability, and organic growth rates and reproductive cycles vary with changes in altitude and latitude; these differences are known as the spatial climate gradients.  Too cold nights and winters and too warm days and summers have drastic impact on the populations and geographic range of disease carriers and can also have an effect on the organisms of disease as well.  Climate variability taking place over the time frame from biyearly to every decade is due to atmospheric, oceanic, and cosmological influences, such as sunspots.  These changes can result in multi-year droughts, monsoons lasting for decades, and vastly different hurricane activities, which have all been shown to affect productivity of plant life, likelihood of bird reproduction, and an increase in insect population.  Longer time scales such as that of the little ice age can cause great population range shifts or possibly extinction.  The recent global warming has resulted in earlier springs, declines in the populations of birds, mammals, and amphibians, and a change in geography for butterfly, bird, and marine invertebrates.  While the average temperature has been increasing globally over the last century, of greater concern is the extreme temperature increases, higher in mid-day and lower in mid-night, which has been shown to have a greater impact on animal and plant species’ population and range.  Recently experimental manipulation has been used in either localized outdoor environments or in laboratories to analyze what effects climate change could have on the ecosystem by altering the temperature of soil and air and type and amount precipitation or combination of the alterations: the growth rates of plants, invertebrate organism population, plant reproduction, and soil organism and chemical make-up have all been shown to be affected.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Linkages Between Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease

Weather and climate are different ideas in similar fields of study.  Weather is the measurement of temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind daily whereas climate measures these factors over a long period of time.  Climate is an average and varies with geography and time.   The average temperature of an area decreases by 6.5 degrees C with every 1000 meter change vertically and decreases 5 degrees C with every 1000 kilometer change from the equator.   The range with which temperature fluctuates due to the seasons is greater towards the poles, with much less change experienced near the equator.  There are many climate cycles occurring from yearly to millennially and some occurring as little as every 100,000 years; these oscillations can cause temperature shifts as high as 10 degree C.  Since the Industrial Revolution, and more notably in the last twenty years, the global average temperature has begun to increase yearly and is predicted to continue increasing several degrees in the next century.  The basis for good predictive weather and climate models does not rest solely on the atmosphere but also in surface variations, especially the oceans.  Currently weather prediction is only effective on a timescale of less than two weeks, while climate models are limited to seasonal or greater timescales.  Including the effects of ocean, atmosphere, and land may make climate models sufficient for shorter timescales and weather prediction for greater timescales.  With infectious disease, the number of cases that indicates and epidemic will vary with each particular disease, region, and time.  Emerging disease can be due to climatic or ecological change, which causes a greater number of people to come into contact with a natural reservoir of infection.  Diseases can be transmitted either directly, due to contact with an agent, or indirectly, through a natural reservoir or host.  Many studies of infectious disease use the SEIR framework:  S. The proportion of people who are able to become infected E. Within that same group, those who have had contact with the agent but who have not become infected I.  The number of people within S group who have contracted the disease R. The number of people who have been removed from the original group S due to either death or immunity.   SEIR attempts to account for the many different factors in disease studies such as population size and density, demographics, connectivity patterns, and immunity.  Diseases and natural reservoirs have environmental conditions that are both favorable and not for the spread of particular diseases which include precipitation, temperature, humidity, and ultraviolet radiation.  Most diseases are sensitive to changes in temperature with regards to their dissemination, replication, and movement.  Climate change over the long-term may result in increased intensity and occurrence in extreme weather events, where the direct impact is obviously more deaths due to disasters, though potentially and indirectly an increase in infectious disease outbreaks.  The diseases associated with flooding are well known while droughts are not nearly as studied, though a disease would not affect a crisis area should it not have been present in the system before the extreme event and had not be introduced.  There are many other factors that influence disease dynamics including land use, migration of disease and hosts, the societal makeup of populations, and public health services.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Under the Weather: Executive Summary

Changes in climate can affect the movement pattern of infectious diseases due to the fact that the microorganisms and their carriers are equally prey to changes in temperature, moisture, and other environmental changes, though other diseases such as HIV or Hepatitis do not have the same causal relationship with the environment because they are transmitted through direct human interaction.  In 2001 the National Research Council was asked to study the issue of the environment, its change, and the possible effect on human health and disease.  Specifically they reviewed: 1. possible connections between the variations of time and space with respect to the climate and the transmission of disease 2. Studying the possibility of creating warning and surveillance systems for climate affected diseases 3. Investigating possible future studies on the relationship of disease, climate, and human health.  Multiple disciplines, whom usually do not work together or in similar fashion, were required for the project due to the multidisciplinary nature of the issue.  Temperature, precipitation, and humidity directly and indirectly change the life of many infectious diseases and their vectors, though they are also affected by the sanitation and health services provided within a region, the density of human or vector population, changes in ecology, and organism travel habits.  Many studies have been conducted on the effect of climate change on disease however they have not been able to account for the many variables that lie under the function of diseases and are not reliable for predicting future change.  The impact of climate change on disease has yet to be well sorted out, though many believe that global warming could have an adverse impact, however human adaptations and health services could potentially prevent or reduce such impacts.  New diseases may emerge or old diseases reemerge in newly evolved forms due to ecosystem changes.  Studies of the relationship are dependent on local, small scale which make it difficult to enlarge the results to a larger scale relationship.  Long term climate change could have a vastly different effect than short term climate change such as ENSO.  Advances in technology will allow for the analysis and more detailed studies.  Historically the strategy has been to survey and respond to disease threats, but in the future hope is for a predict and prevent strategy.  Climate forecasts and observations could be used in identifying high risk areas and preventing the or reducing their occurrence.  A general understanding of the relationship may allow for some form of early warning system at a low cost, but some may require a more costly prediction system, depending on the particular disease and region.  Systems will only be beneficial if the operating agency has the sufficient resources to act upon their results.  Climate forecasts must also be combined with meteorological, ecological, and epidemiological systems to work properly as an advanced warning system.  Public health officials and government agencies must work in conjunction with one another for the systems to have their desired effect.  The research into these relationships has only just begun and has a long road to traverse before it can become effective.  The data set involving disease, climate, and geography need be greatly increased for prediction models to even be a possibility.  The interdisciplinary collaboration in universities and private institutions need be greatly increased.  New disease will always have the upper hand in the battle, however the goal should be to reduce people vulnerability to disease.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Life Support: Environmental Endocrine Disruption

Chemicals found in the environment have effects on fetuses much more than on adults because even the slightest of changes in the hormone levels of the undeveloped human can have very drastic consequences.  These chemicals are able to directly bind to or block the hormone receptors making gene transcription initiated by the hormone receptors erroneous.  Similar exposure levels in adults do not show nearly as great physiological changes.  Possible abnormalities include feminization of males, abnormal sexual behavior, birth defects, altered sex ratio, lower sperm density, decreased testis size, altered time to puberty, cancers of the mammary glands or testis, reproductive failure and thyroid dysfunction.  Studies that have been conducted have difficulty in consistency due to the time between exposure and the resultant effects, such as cancer showing decades after first exposure, and finding a control population, since any control population is going to already have some degree of exposure.  Organochlorine contaminated food has been shown to affect the brain development of lab animals and children exposed have shown delayed psychomotor development and increased distractibility.  Some pesticides result in decreased brain density of some nerve receptor types and hyperactive behavior.  Because hormones act at such low levels even the slightest of chemical exposure can result in very bad developmental effects.  One of the main failures of past studies is their focus on the individual rather than the population as a whole, though the size and seriousness of the health threat is still uncertain.  Work by the International Joint Commission, United States and Canada, has begun striving towards the elimination of volatile chemicals.  They hope for zero discharge of chemicals from human activities, analysis of chemical effects from creation to destruction and afterwards, and reversing the burden of proof from showing that a chemical is harmful to showing that a chemical is not harmful before it is allowed to be used.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Life Support: Urban and Transboundary Air Pollution

Since the Industrial Revolution people have been studying the effects of pollutants on lung disease.  During the Industrial Revolution entire communities of North America and Europe fell seriously ill or died from air pollutants.  These episodes were a result of air stagnation, which increased the concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere, more specifically those of sulfur dioxide and suspended particulates.  Because of these episodes scientists and governments began studying the adverse effects of pollution – identifying the sources of pollutants, and discovering exposure-response relationships, eventually leading to controls against pollution.  Because the air cannot be contained pollution is able to travel across borders.  Poorer nations generally have a greater problem with pollution than wealthier ones, especially due to the heavy use of coal for power and heating.  The countries which have found ways to reduce the emissions of pollutants from industry, power plants, and automobiles have created new problems via the formation of acids and ozone from their outputs.  The most common adverse health effects due to pollution are caused by sulfur dioxide, particulates, photochemical oxidants, ozone and nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide.  Sulfur dioxide is a result of the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal and crude oil, generally affiliated with power plants and oil refineries.  Great reductions in the measurements of sulfur dioxide and related pollutants were achieved after the Clean Air Act of 1970s America.  However, the tall stacks which were implemented merely send the pollutants higher into the atmosphere where they are able to change into acid aerosols.  Particulates are the result of industrial activity which put off particles into the air which do not easily dissipate.  Particulate counts have been shown related with an increase in mortality rates.  Finer particles have been shown to be much more detrimental to respiratory systems than more coarse particles. In areas with high particulate levels deaths in children from respiratory illnesses is equally high.  In the developing world only infant diarrhea accounts for more deaths in children under the age of five.  Ozone and nitrogen dioxide are most commonly produced by sunlight on the output of automobiles.  When the amount of sunlight is greatest during the summer the greatest amount of ozone is produced.  The safest area to avoid exposure to ozone is indoors because ozone seems to be unable to contact surfaces chemically unchanged.  Carbon monoxide is another major automobile emission.  Many major U.S. cities have exceedingly unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide.  Carbon monoxide impairs the transport of oxygen throughout the cardiovascular system, the effects of which can be headache, dizziness, fatigue, and even death.  Poorer nations who use wood, crop residues, animal dung, and other carbon based fuels for cooking and heating are especially at risk for indoor pollution.  The government has failed greatly in studying the problem of pollution indoors.  Nations need to work together in finding solutions to the ever-growing pollution problem, as it is a global issue not only local one.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Meat can be Murder…

Vegetarianism has potential health benefits such as a lowered risk of heart disease and cancer, however vegetarians are not the only ones who can achieve these advantages.  As far as public health is concerned, simply reducing the intake of saturated fats would have a great impact.  The total meat consumption of the average American was fifty seven pounds more in 2000 than in 1950.  The foods that contain unhealthy amounts of saturated fats raises the risk of heart disease and stroke and increases cholesterol.  Also, cooking some meats at high temperatures, required for the elimination of some bacteria, can produce chemicals believed to be potential human carcinogens.  High intake of well cooked meat has been shown to increase the risk of developing colorectal and breast cancer.  Eating much charred or burned meat is very likely unhealthy.  Consuming more meat than is necessary for the human body will merely cause the body to eliminate it through the urinary tract putting additional strain on the kidneys in order to metabolize it.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

The Fatal Harvest – Industrial Agriculture Will Feed the World

Around 800 million people go hungry daily, and even in the United States where we export more food than we consume 33 million people go without food.  The industrial agriculture corporations want the public believe that this hunger is due to the fact that there is not enough food produced in the world to supply all its populace.  They purport the lies that increased chemical agriculture will provide for an adequate increase in food surpluses so that there will no longer be any starving people.  However, in reality, the rate of food production has actually been adequate for the population and in the last 35 years has actually outpaced the growth of the worlds population by 16 percent per capita.   There is enough food produced throughout the world to provide for 4.3 pounds of food per person daily: many times more than necessary.  The true cause of starvation and world hunger is poverty.  After large conglomerates began buying up farm land the people who once depended on this land for their sustenance no longer had a source of preservation.  Many of these people then moved towards the industrialized cities to fight amongst the masses for low paying wages in dangerous factories.  “If you don’t have land on which to grow food or the money to buy it, you go hungry no matter how dramatically technology pushes up food production.”  Those who are still able to farm the land must pay greater costs for the technologically infused seeds and machinery and end up getting less for their crop than they once would.  This price is not however reflected in the base cost of the consumer due to the large mark-up from the middle man.  The large corporations could help the situation in their local communities by growing staple crops but choose instead to grow luxury high-profit crops which will fetch a greater amount of money when exported to the rich. 

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Diet for a Dead Planet

Farming, while once thought of as one of the kinder industries to the environment, is now finding itself more destructive than many of the more feared industrious wasters.  Farmers have failed to follow pollution controls long established in other industries.  Pesticides, fertilizers, and animal waste combine in the farming industry’s toll on the environment.  No longer do most farmers practice crop rotation which keeps the topsoil fertile and prevents any one species of insect from gaining any advantage.  Instead, due to government subsidies for individual crops, farmers practice monocroping which drains the soil of its nutrients and allows particular pest species to become dominant.   This requires the farmers to apply fertilizers to the soil in order for the crops to have sufficient nutrients and pesticides to the plants and area to rid of the pests.  The pests who survive the chemical invasion reproduce and become all that much more virulent as the new population finds itself immune to the previous pesticides.  Thereafter the farmer must implore alternative, sometimes stronger pesticides.  All of these chemicals seep into the ground, sometimes spoiling water aquifers, wash down into nearby streams and creeks, become lodged inside the crop itself, and evaporate into the atmosphere.  Probably the biggest criminal of agribusiness though are the animal factories.  Here, thousands of hogs, chickens, or cows stand day after day in a pen just large enough for their frames eating protein-laden foods and ingesting antibiotics, while the urine and feces rains down through slats in the floor.  All this waste flows like a river into a large tub sitting nearby where it gets taken into nearby waterways and absorbed into the sky.  Research by the EPA has shown that this animal waste is the largest contributor to pollution in American waterways. 

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Six Modern Plagues,  Chapter 5:  A Spring to Die For: Hantavirus

                Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a disease that has existed in the American Southwest since, at the very least, the time of Columbus’s exploration.  It invades the lungs of its victim and causes them to drown in their own fluid.  The disease is transmitted by the urine or saliva of mice.  When there is a great increase in the mouse population of the area there is a proportionate increase in the number of Hantavirus cases.  This was especially the case when in 1993 there was a great outbreak of the virus which has since been attributed to the recent heavy rains caused by El Nino.  Though the Navajo had knowledge of the disease for centuries before, what emerged for the rest of Americans was “a powerfully new, encompassing view of humans not as a stand-alone species but as just one species among many in a web of climate, ecology, and intertwined fates.”  The spring of 1993, just as the months before previous outbreaks, had seen a huge explosion of the mouse population in nearby rural areas.  The abundance of mice thereafter ventured into the cities and residential areas where the spread the disease to humans.

Selected Readings on Human Health, Disease, and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health, Disease, and the Environment. 

Six Modern Plagues: Introduction

Fifty years ago the people of the west believed that humanity was nearing a point where no longer would we need to worry about sickness.  Medicine had developed to a point where it seemed that it had an answer for every infectious disease in existence.  In reality, though, the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were merely the calm before the storm.  Today new diseases are being discovered at a rate faster than any previous time in history.  Many of these are diseases which have long existed in other species but due to humanity’s changing of its environment they are now jumping ship from their previous bodies to us.  This change is occurring because people are now invading land which they have never before occupied; forcing bacteria and viruses to evolve and adapt to their newfound hosts.  Evolution usually occurs naturally over long periods of time but in today’s age the great ecological change being caused by humans is speeding up this process.  Not only are these new diseases on the rise, but old diseases which have been lying dormant are beginning to re-emerge.  Diseases such as small pox and leprosy were not long ago thought to have been completely eradicated but they are beginning to return and in strains which the old cures and vaccines have no affect on.  The problem is that the speed with which our microbial enemies evolve and adapt is increasing and humanity is directly responsible.  Our ever increasing destruction of natural habitat, invasion of areas where we have not previously inhabited, and shift from a sedentary lifestyle to daily transcontinental travel is merely speeding up this process.  A change in dominators has already begun.  We will lose the ability to regain upper hand if we do not soon change our ways.

Selected Readings on Food, Agriculture and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Food, Agriculture and the Environment. 

The Eco-Foods Guide: Foreword/Introduction

According to the experiences of Lappe, the better food you choose for yourself, the more pleasurable eating becomes. The greatest downfall of people’s eating habits today is making the quick and easy choice of fast-food restaurants or processed foods from the supermarket.  These kind of simplicities are the root cause of our nation’s greatest epidemic, obesity.  The key factor in the explosive rate of obesity is the processed, sugared, salty, fatty, meat-centered diet of the majority of Americans.  It is a diet unlike anything our species has encountered before.  We are the only species that knowingly consumes food that will eventually result in its own destruction.  Humans are able to eat a lot of sugar and fat in a single sitting; this trait served people well before agriculture, when food was needed to be stored internally after a big kill or find, but is now our bane.  What we eat has a great effect on the environment as well, though most academics would have dismissed such ideas until recently.  The best food for us is the food that is best for Mother Earth and people generally want to purchase the foods which are good for them as well as good for the Earth: it is only a matter of the availability and knowledge of product. 

Selected Readings on Food, Agriculture and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Food, Agriculture and the Environment. 

Diet for a Dead Planet: Killing Fields

Farming, while once thought of as one of the kinder industries to the environment, is now finding itself more destructive than many of the more feared industrious wasters.  Farmers have failed to follow pollution controls long established in other industries.  Pesticides, fertilizers, and animal waste combine in the farming industry’s toll on the environment.  No longer do most farmers practice crop rotation which keeps the topsoil fertile and prevents any one species of insect from gaining any advantage.  Instead, due to government subsidies for individual crops, farmers practice monocroping which drains the soil of its nutrients and allows particular pest species to become dominant.   This requires the farmers to apply fertilizers to the soil in order for the crops to have sufficient nutrients and pesticides to the plants and area to rid of the pests.  The pests who survive the chemical invasion reproduce and become all that much more virulent as the new population finds itself immune to the previous pesticides.  Thereafter the farmer must implore alternative, sometimes stronger pesticides.  All of these chemicals seep into the ground, sometimes spoiling water aquifers, wash down into nearby streams and creeks, become lodged inside the crop itself, and evaporate into the atmosphere.  Probably the biggest criminal of agribusiness though are the animal factories.  Here, thousands of hogs, chickens, or cows stand day after day in a pen just large enough for their frames eating protein-laden foods and ingesting antibiotics, while the urine and feces rains down through slats in the floor.  All this waste flows like a river into a large tub sitting nearby where it gets taken into nearby waterways and absorbed into the sky.  Research by the EPA has shown that this animal waste is the largest contributor to pollution in American waterways. 

Selected Readings on Food, Agriculture and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Food, Agriculture and the Environment. 

Against the Grain: Hog Heaven

Human beings have a need for agriculture, or at least for its byproduct food, however agriculture hasn’t a need for human beings in the sense that it evolves regardless of the needs of humanity.  For thousands of years people had a deep connection with the food that they consumed, but with the appearance of the industrialism on the scene food became seen less as a link to nature and more as a detriment to human advancement.  This change in thinking required for our food to become more processed in order for it to no longer appear natural.  The beginning of this process was with the fad diets of the mid 1800s which had the goal of bettered bowel movements through the consumption of the necessary processed foods, many coming solely from grain.  Grain made the perfect crop for this process, for in its natural state it is not able to be consumed.  Wheat requires, at a minimum, hulling, grinding, and cooking.  This is distinctly more complex than the simple consumption of most vegetables and fruits, of which man had been accustomed to for millennia.  Grains have as a primary ingredient starch, which is a complex carbohydrate.  Starch can be processed into sugar, and from this idea was born the entire industry of processed foods and the conversion of crop foods into commodities.  From this eventually came corn syrup and in the 60s high fructose corn syrup, which is a key ingredient in nearly every packaged food to this day.  These foods gave people a convenience and appearance of status never before afforded to the lower classes of society.  These ideals still permeate our culture to this day in the wealth of fast food available throughout every town and city of America.  The mass marketing and processing of grains as commodities has provided people with “cheap” and “easy” calories, though at the great cost of our own health.

Selected Readings on Food, Agriculture and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Food, Agriculture and the Environment. 

Against the Grain: Hard Times

The movement of Europeans to the lands of the New World extended the average life span by decades.  One of the chief reasons for this drastic change was that those new to the western world were actually eating healthier.  The Americas had greater food, both in quantity and quality.  The first recorded famines occurred some six thousand years ago, a phenomenon Manning directly attributes to agriculture.  Most of the great nations of the colonial age were able to alleviate many of their famine problems with the expansion and movement of the population outside of their borders.  China, however, did not become imperialistic – at least in the colonial sense of the word – and so many of the same famine problems persist today. Famine is the one of nature’s solutions to the population explosion inherent with agriculture: the other being expansion.  The argument that Manning and many others would make, of why famine still persists to this day, is that the problem rests with the hierarchical structure of agriculture; while we have reached a point where our technology and tactics are sufficient to feed the world, the poverty of the hungry is the greatest cause.  Famine in Europe finally began to see a downturn with the introduction of New World crops into the agricultural system there.  While most of the poor throughout Europe were feeding daily on wheat, the potato took hold in Ireland, a land where virtually no edible staple crops could be grown.  The potato took root on the island and by the eighteenth century was the sole food of most Irish, most eating up to six pounds a day.  This surplus of food saw the usual trend of population explosion with it doubling by the mid nineteenth century. In 1845 a catastrophe took place on the island – the same that any monocrop society will eventually face.  The potato began fighting a great plague, without success.  Over the next sixty years almost half of population, that gained from the potato boom, would succumb to starvation or emigrate out of the nation.  The potato forever left its mark on Ireland and the Irish people.

Selected Readings on Food, Agriculture and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Food, Agriculture and the Environment. 

The Fatal Harvest – Industrial Agriculture Will Feed the World

Around 800 million people go hungry daily, and even in the United States where we export more food than we consume 33 million people go without food.  The industrial agriculture corporations want the public believe that this hunger is due to the fact that there is not enough food produced in the world to supply all its populace.  They purport the lies that increased chemical agriculture will provide for an adequate increase in food surpluses so that there will no longer be any starving people.  However, in reality, the rate of food production has actually been adequate for the population and in the last 35 years has actually outpaced the growth of the worlds population by 16 percent per capita.   There is enough food produced throughout the world to provide for 4.3 pounds of food per person daily: many times more than necessary.  The true cause of starvation and world hunger is poverty.  After large conglomerates began buying up farm land the people who once depended on this land for their sustenance no longer had a source of preservation.  Many of these people then moved towards the industrialized cities to fight amongst the masses for low paying wages in dangerous factories.  “If you don’t have land on which to grow food or the money to buy it, you go hungry no matter how dramatically technology pushes up food production.”  Those who are still able to farm the land must pay greater costs for the technologically infused seeds and machinery and end up getting less for their crop than they once would.  This price is not however reflected in the base cost of the consumer due to the large mark-up from the middle man.  The large corporations could help the situation in their local communities by growing staple crops but choose instead to grow luxury high-profit crops which will fetch a greater amount of money when exported to the rich. 

Paradigm Shift of the Hellenistic Period

Prompt: Many historians characterize early Greek science, from the Presocratics to Aristotle, as a golden age of physics (despite the fact that early Greek physics was not quantitative in character). For the Hellenistic period, in contrast, the discoveries of mathematicians (including mathematical astronomers and mathematical geographers) stand out more than those of the physicists. Do you agree that there was a general shift from physics to mathematics in the Hellenistic period? If so, what might have caused or contributed to it, and why is it significant?

Selected Readings on Food, Agriculture and the Environment

The following are responses and summaries of various readings related to Food, Agriculture and the Environment. 

The Eco-Foods Guide: What Does IPM Mean?

IPM, integrated pest management, is a middle ground between organic and conventional agriculture.  IPM uses complex planning and processes that are biologically, chemically, and culturally different than organic and conventional growing.  IPM attempts to rid crop fields of pests, only using chemicals as a last resort.  IPM is a multidisciplinary approach involving agronomy, pathology, entomology, weed science, agricultural economics, and much more.  Much of the work involved in IPM is in planning: preparing for the coming pests and making attempts to prevent their inhabitation.  A commonly used mechanic is the use of insect pheromones to confuse a population.  The pheromones can distract the insects enough to keep them from destroying a harvest.  Also, with using “bait” crops and inserting predator bugs into a field, an even greater reduction of chemical use is achieved.  Though IPM seems to preach the reduction of pesticide use, it seems that often its practitioners merely try to limit the negative effects of its use such as the use of planting vegetation along stream banks to prevent runoff.