Globalizing Disease

The news cycle is all abuzz about the Zika Virus.. (Pardon the pun.) It's a form of Dengue Fever that is spreading across South and Central American and has made inroads to North America thanks to the tourist trade.

As a history major in college, I'm not surprised. Not at all. Not one bit.

Why? It's the price we pay for globalization, foreign travel, and foreign trade.

In college I had a professor that was wise enough to have us read a book called Plagues and Peoples by William H McNeill. He asks a simple question – How did Cortez decimate the Aztec Civilization so easily and looked for an answer.

The answer was … disease.

As civilizations go out and explore they bring back goods and, well, bad things. Diseases that no one in the “home” area has been exposed to and the people pay a price – usually with many people dying and many others getting deathly ill.

This pattern has been repeated numerous times throughout history. Accidentally and intentionally. We all remember the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Cause? It is suspected that trade with China was the cause. Rats with the fleas that caused the disease jumped on board a European bound ship and the rest,as they say, is history.

The same pattern comes into play with the Spanish Flu of WWI fame (or infamy). Swine flu, Bird flu (the vaccine was useless for that), West Nile Virus, and an epidemiologist could go on.

Ask any member of the First Nations peoples about measles and what that did to their people. BTW: If what the Europeans did to the First Nations peoples would be called a crime against humanity now. (Just saying.)

So, now we have an evolution (thank you Darwin for the term) of the Dengue fever breaking out of its natural habitat into the world stage.

And I'm not surprised.

So, knowing this, what do we do about it?

Apocryphal story – As I can not verify it – Supposedly a group of travelers was in the tropics and one of their members caught malaria and the great advanced western medicine couldn't treat it. They encountered some tribesmen from the area who recognized it as malaria and made a concoction of the Qaw Qaw tree to treat it. The westerners said it wouldn't work and wound up eating crow. It seems that synthetic medicine has its limits.

That being said, when, in the pursuit of profits, people plow into the tropical areas, destroying the native flora and fauna in the pursuit of the almighty dollar, they almost always open up Pandora's Box. The rest of that story is well known.

In the process of destroying the land for development, we also run the risk of destroying the cures for the various diseases that we wind up exposing to the world. We also wind up murdering the tribes people that know how to use that knowledge to cure the condition. They don't want to give up their land or traditions and somehow the “Right to Life” culture that conservative politicians scream about up here doesn't make it to the corporate board rooms or third world nations. Only the talk about higher profits does.

Profits at what price though?

I have read this in far too many books, magazine articles, etc – Sickle Cell anemia. It can be “cured” - more like lived with, In Africa, those that have sickle cell anemia are “immune” to malaria. It's when they adopt the western diet (Standard American Diet, or SAD – which is what it is) that it becomes fatal. When they learn about their native foods and start eating them the way that they would in Africa (recipes, time of day, etc) the condition becomes highly manageable.

So, how do we deal with this?

First – get in contact with the natives of the region and find out how they treat the condition. Hopefully we can repeat it in other areas.

Second – To borrow the “Carpenter's Rule:” Measure Twice, cut once. Look at the region carefully, let scientists do their work before plowing in. And ask, is there a better way? And do we really need this? There is.

Third – and we really need to look at this seriously – how much profit and money do we really need? How many people need to suffer and die for the almighty dollar? Look at the Bubonic Plague and Spanish Flu. How many and for what?

Globalization is inevitable.

The real question is how?

Pandora's Box is open.

One of these times it might be too hard to close.

And money might not be the cure.