6/20/2023 0 Comments David quammen zoonosePondering them as a group tends to reaffirm the old Darwinian truth (the darkest of his truths, well known and persistently forgotten) that humanity is a kind of animal, inextricably connected with other animals: in origin and in descent, in sickness and in health. The Spanish influenza of 1918-19 had its ultimate source in a wild aquatic bird, and after passing through some combination of domesticated animals emerged to kill as many as 50 million people. The list is seemingly endless, including Ebola and the bubonic plague. Influenza is a whole category of others as is measles, which is likely the result of a spillover of a virus from cattle to humans. AIDS is a disease of zoonotic origin caused by a virus that, having reached humans through just a few accidental events in western and central Africa, now passes human-to-human by the millions. According to David Quammen in his book “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic,” there are more human diseases transmitted from animals that you might expect. Rabies is a zoonosis, a disease caused by a pathogen transmitted from animals to humans. it marked the date in 1885, when a young boy received the first vaccine against rabies.
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