Emerging Infectious Diseases:
What If?
by
Robert G. Whalen
Directeur de Recherche
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Collège de France
11, Place Marcelin Berthelot
75231 Paris cedex 5, France
E-mail: whalen@pasteur.fr
URL: http://www.genweb.com/Dnavax/dnav
ax.html
Tel: +33-1-44.27.13.13; Fax: +33-1-44.27.13.13
"But there is no single problem that is more pressing than our
fast-deteriorating relations with the microbial world." So wrote Barbara
Culliton (1), the Editor-in-Chief of Nature Medicine, at the end of 1995.
This stark statement served to emphasize the conclusion to her comments on
the re-emergence of cholera and plague, the growing number of cases of Lyme
disease, and humanity's occasional but frenetic duels with Ebola virus. What
if one day an Ebola-infected individual makes it to the boarding lounge and
embarks on an airplane? As pointed out by David Heymann, WHO's director of
the new division of emerging disease, this will surely result in the spread
of the virus to far corners of the world (2) with the obvious and dramatic
consequences that one can imagine. And, unhappily, it is almost a
commonplace to evoke the ravages of the AIDS virus, whose spread could
easily be diminished by changes in human behavior, although a vaccine is
clearly indicated however the basis for one has not yet been clearly
delineated.
More To Come...
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