# 725
Forty years ago, the Surgeon General of the United States declared that we'd won the battle against Infectious diseases. Those were heady days. We'd seemingly conquered the scourges of our parent's and grandparent's days, and many thought they'd never return.
Polio, which terrified many when I was a child, had been all but eliminated. Smallpox was declared eradicated in the 1970's. And TB sanitariums, once a familiar sight, were being downsized or closed altogether in the United States.
We had vaccines, and miracle antibiotics, and even the new and exciting anti-viral drugs like Amantadine. Science had saved us, or at least so it seemed.
Of course, today we know that those early predictions were wrong. Since 1975, infectious diseases have been on the rise, and that upward trend appears to be ongoing. And it isn't just the old plagues we have to contend with, we have new and emerging ones as well.
Avian flu is of course at the top of our worry list. As an influenza virus, it has the potential of spreading throughout the world rapidly, and this particular strain, the H5N1 virus, has thus far been an efficient killer. Thankfully, it hasn't acquired the ability to spread easily from human-to-human, but many scientists fear that is only a matter of time.
But the H5N1 virus isn't the only `bird flu' out there that has infected humans over the past decade.
In 1999 the H9N2 virus infected two children in Hong Kong, and another in 2003. In 2002 89 people became infected with the H7N2 virus, with one death, in the Netherlands. And in 2004, two infants in Egypt contracted the H10N7 virus.
Any of these viruses could spark the next influenza pandemic. All have shown the ability to infect humans, and the H7N2 was particularly easily spread. None, however, show the lethality of the H5N1 virus. At least, not yet.
Nearly all of the emerging infectious diseases today come from animals, what are called zoonotic diseases. Just as influenza comes from birds, the deadly Nipah virus now infecting humans in Malaysia comes from fruit bats, but may infect other domesticated animals.
Chikungunya, a once rare viral fever, is now sweeping across the Indian Ocean, may soon rival Dengue Fever and Malaria as a mosquito borne scourge. We've already seen one case here in Florida, and scientists worry that it, like the West Nile Virus, will become a yearly visitor.
Lyme disease, first detect in 1975 in Lyme Connecticut, has now swept across the entire nation, and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been infected.
For those who are diagnosed early, and receive treatment, it is easily cured. But for others, like myself, who went misdiagnosed for years, it becomes a chronic and debilitating illness. Lyme remains one of the most misdiagnosed diseases in the country.
XDR-TB, an old nemesis that has learned new tricks, is on the upswing, and doctors are watching its spread with alarm. Resistant to nearly all of our traditional antibiotics, it is almost always fatal.
Not all of these diseases have pandemic potential. Some may only be capable of producing epidemics. Localized outbreaks. But for those in affected areas, they are no less deadly.
By far, most of the antibiotics used in this country go to the prophylactic treatment of livestock, and to fatten them up. And so, we now are seeing more and more resistant bacteria. Antibiotic resistant infections cost the lives of tens of thousands of Americans each year.
Our older antivirals, like Amantadine, have been largely eroded in value because they have been indiscriminately fed to poultry in China to prevent bird flu outbreaks in their flocks. While this may dampen the number of outbreaks, it increases the chance that when one does occur, it will be resistant to Amantadine.
Every day we squander precious resources we will need against the next pandemic in favor of cheaper chicken or beef. A short-term gain at a long-term cost.
As our world becomes increasingly crowded, and we expand deeper into jungles and swamps to find places to live and produce food, we increase our risks of contact with diseases that previously were rare, or unheard of, in man.
The consumption of bush meat in Africa likely brought us AIDS, and is responsible for the occasional Ebola outbreak. The cutting down of the rainforests in Argentina to create pasture land is now viewed as the source for the hemorrhagic fevers that now plague the South American continent.
Factory farming operations, where millions of chickens are crowded beak-to-tail in buildings the size of a football field, are the perfect breeding ground for new avian flu's. Low pathogen avian influenzas in this environment can easily develop into high pathogen (HPAI) diseases.
Every step of the way, in hindsight, we can see the folly of our actions. That in many ways, the diseases we face today are self-inflicted wounds.
Yet we continue undeterred on the path to the next pandemic, one we may face without the armament of many of our miracle drugs, simply because in the short run, it is the most economical course of action.
It is a sad commentary that the only upside to the next pandemic is, we were able to buy it wholesale.
Note: For a much more in depth look at emerging zoonotic diseases I'd refer my readers to Dr. Michael Greger's book. Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, which is available to read online. It's an illuminating read.
