WPpg1: As Climates Warm, Diseases Infiltrate: Move North; Areas Unprepared

[DeepModem Mom]

As Climates Warm, Diseases Infiltrate
Viruses Moving North to Areas Unprepared for Them, Experts Say
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 5, 2006; Page A01

....Global warming -- with an accompanying rise in floods and droughts -- is fueling the spread of epidemics in areas unprepared for the diseases, say many health experts worldwide. Mosquitoes, ticks, mice and other carriers are surviving warmer winters and expanding their range, bringing health threats with them.

Malaria is climbing the mountains to reach populations in higher elevations in Africa and Latin America. Cholera is growing in warmer seas. Dengue fever and Lyme disease are moving north. West Nile virus, never seen on this continent until seven years ago, has infected more than 21,000 people in the United States and Canada and killed more than 800.

The World Health Organization has identified more than 30 new or resurgent diseases in the last three decades, the sort of explosion some experts say has not happened since the Industrial Revolution brought masses of people together in cities....

***

Scientists have warned for more than a decade that climate change would broaden the range of many diseases. But the warnings were couched in the future, and qualified. The spread of disease is affected by many uncertainties, including unforeseen resistance to antibiotics, failures of public health systems, population movement and yearly climate swings. Scientists have warned for more than a decade that climate change would broaden the range of many diseases. But the warnings were couched in the future, and qualified. The spread of disease is affected by many uncertainties, including unforeseen resistance to antibiotics, failures of public health systems, population movement and yearly climate swings....But Paul Epstein, a physician who worked in Africa and is now on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, said that, if anything, scientists weren't worried enough about the problem.

"Things we projected to occur in 2080 are happening in 2006. What we didn't get is how fast and how big it is, and the degree to which the biological systems would respond," Epstein said in an interview in Boston. "Our mistake was in underestimation."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401931.html

[kestrel91316]

1. Many will die. Many will survive and adapt to the new reality.

The Reaper will become familiar once again to all of us. We forget how it used to be - mothers dying young in childbirth, children dying before age 5 of simple infections, healthy adults struck down by malaria or blood poisoning or cholera .........the times, they are a-changin'.

[lovuian]

2. All one infection fun loving world!!!

:hurts:

[applegrove]

3. Hey! Big Pharma may finally take on malaria and other tropical

diseases!!
:woohoo:

[hedgehog]

4. I've heard that malaria is already returning to Florida.

That's what happens when too many homeless people are sleeping outside overnight.

In a few years we may all be thanking Bill Gates for donating his money into malaria research today.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. Those darned scientists and their scienceism.

Scientists have warned for more than a decade that climate change would broaden the range of many diseases.

LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!