Human Activities & New Diseases
SARS, BSE and West Nile aren't just making headlines, they're making history. These diseases are truly products of our age - an age of global transport, industrialized agriculture and global warming. And they represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of emerging diseases.
Humans today are pushing every conceivable ecological boundary. We are displacing animal habitats, feeding meat products to herbivores, dining on exotic predators and doing it all while rushing madly about the planet in cars, boats and jet airplanes. We are everywhere and meddling in everything. As a result, we are being exposed to "new" diseases that have never before infected humans.
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Afroz Ali
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Florida Lakes Amoeba
Naegleria Fowleri is a single-celled creature that lurks below water surface. It is generally found everywhere in warm waters and the like, and completely harmless. But then something triggers these single-celled creature to literally attack humans. It often enters the human through the nasal passage (whilst someone is swimming or in water), then travels up into the brain and the spinal cord and destroys the tissues. Upon infection, it is fatal within 2-7 days, if not treated in the earliest stages of infection.
This single-celled "monster" may not necessarily be triggered on by climate change, although much evidence points that way. The Florida Lakes, where deaths have already occurred, has a higher than normal water temperature, as well as affected by drought. There is a worrying suspicion that it is also affected by environmental degradation due to pollution. More investigation is needed to find out the causes that triggers these creatures.
USA seems to be the only place (September, 2007) affected by the amoeba.
David Suzuki, in his masterpiece From "From Naked Ape to Super Species" (please check the literature review section for more details on this great book), discusses how pollution from pig farming in the Florida area previously has caused certain bacteria to come alive and literally eat fish alive, as if a pirhana took half a bite into the fish, or someone innocently walking in the infected water. Consequently, climate change may be a contributor, but industry could be a major factor behind this disaster.
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