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News/Event Item
Study Links Warming to Epidemics
Science: The survey lists species hit by outbreaks and suggests that humans are also in peril.
21 June 2002
By Usha Lee McFarling
A wide-ranging survey of world ecosystems shows that warmer temperatures have sparked a host of epidemics in plants and animals, suggesting that global warming could ravage the planet's ecology and accelerate disease in a number of species--including our own.
...The most contentious aspect of the debate has been the effect of warming on human epidemics, which are far more difficult to dissect because they involve a range of factors such as sanitation and vaccination.
...Paul Reiter, a dengue expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Puerto Rico office, argues against the relative importance of climate in human disease by pointing to periods in the past when malaria and other tropical diseases pervaded cooler regions. He argues that the spread of malaria is more closely linked to deforestation, agricultural practices, human migration, poor public health services, civil war, strife and natural disasters.
...Other epidemiologists argue that humans may be able to counter new temperature-sensitive plagues of disease with technology and better public health services.
Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
For the Full Article, go to:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-disease21jun21.story
Science
http://www.sciencemag.org
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
http://www.co2science.org/
Read about the Global Health Council's 2003 conference, Our Future on Common Ground: Health and the Environment
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Andrea Welch on 21 June 2002
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