Abstract
Hardly a week goes by without new evidence of a growing microbial threat to human well-being. In the United States, thousands are killed and millions are sickened each year from food-borne illnesses caused by E. coli, Salmonella spp., cyclospora, and cryptosporidium.1 Outbreaks of hepatitis A have become so common that it is now recommended that children be vaccinated against it in 17 US states.2 Exotic diseases, such as West Nile fever, appear in parts of the country where they have never been seen before. Food shipments from abroad, often carrying various pathogens, are increasingly taxing the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to inspect them. Less than two per cent of the 2.7 million shipments of fruit, vegetables, seafood and processed foods shipped yearly ever get inspected.3
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Notes
For a more detailed description of early European responses to the plague see Watts, Sheldon. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, 1–15.
See Crosby, Alfred. America’s Forgotten Pandemic: the Influenza of 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
See Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. ‘Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: Evidence from the Cases’. International Security Summer 1994; Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. and Blitt, Jessica. Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population, and Security. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
See Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
See Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994;
Morse, Stephen S., ed. Emerging Viruses. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
For more information on this early scattering see Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi and Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco. The Great Human Diasporas. Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley, 1995:157–9.
See Pirages, Dennis and Runci, Paul. ‘Ecological Interdependence and the Spread of Infectious Disease’. in Cusimano, MaryAnn, ed., Beyond Sovereignty: Issues for a Global Agenda. New York: St. Martin’s/Worth, 1999.
McNeill, William. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976, 115–7.
Hobhouse, Henry. Forces of Change: an Unorthodox View of History. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1990, 11.
Lappe, Mark. Evolutionary Medicine: Rethinking the Origins of Disease. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994, 8.
United Nations Development Program. Human Development Report 1999. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, Table 6.
Data from World Health Organization. The World Health Report 1995. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1995, Table A-3.
See Laurie Garrett. The Coming Plague New York: Penguin Books, 1995, 557–68.
World Health Organization. World Health Report, 1999. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1999, Statistical Annex.
World Health Organization. World Health Report, 1997. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1997, 124.
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© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Glasgow, S., Pirages, D. (2001). Microsecurity. In: Price-Smith, A.T. (eds) Plagues and Politics. Global Issues Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524248_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524248_10
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