Experts Tie Diseases to Destruction of Environment
4/18/98
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Title: Experts Tie Diseases to Destruction of Environment
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/18/98
Experts tie diseases to destruction of environment
NEW YORK, April 18 - Experts warned a conference on Saturday of fresh outbreaks
of Lyme disease in the United States and tropical diseases across the
developing world unless people found better ways to manage the natural
environment.
They said new menaces like the AIDS and Ebola viruses and old scourges like
malaria were the direct result of interfering with the environment - destroying
forests, wiping out animal species and polluting waters.
Preserving biodiversity, or the variety of different species of animals and
plants, is crucial to preventing even bigger epidemics of infectious disease,
they said.
"It is a warning to us when we are too active in these areas,'' Dr. Jaap
Goudsmit, a top AIDS expert at the University of Amsterdam, told the conference
on the value of plants, animals and microbes to human health.
Goudsmit said frightening new viruses threatened to leap from monkeys into
people. "There's a lot to come if we continue our current behavior,'' he said.
He said studies he had done showed monkeys alone harbored many viruses. "We are
actually very worried because we are finding so many viruses in these monkeys
that humans are susceptible to,'' he told the conference, sponsored by the
American Museum of Natural History.
People catch the viruses when they eat monkeys or chimpanzees, capture them as
pets, or use them in scientific laboratories. And as species of primates are
wiped out, the viruses will be forced to seek new hosts, perhaps humans,
Goudsmit said.
Richard Ostfeld of the University of Connecticut found outbreaks of Lyme
disease in the Eastern United States were linked to acorn production in forests
and the population of deer mice.
The mice carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. They are bitten by
ticks, which can then transmit the infection to people. The result is fever,
rash and long-lasting health effects.
Ostfeld said his most recent research showed a record acorn harvest in the last
year.
"In 1999, because of the life cycle of the tick ... we should see extremely
high numbers of cases of Lyme disease unless we can prevent it,'' Ostfeld
predicted.
Wiping out mice might work but is virtually impossible. What Ostfeld did find
was that many animals carried the Lyme agent but only a few transmitted it to
ticks. If the bacterium can be spread among a large number of different
species of animal, it will be less likely to pass to humans.
"Those ticks that feed on a mouse are highly likely to become infected with
Lyme disease,'' Ostfeld said. "Those ticks that feed on other species are
highly unlikely.''
States with high numbers of other animals living in the forests, such as
rabbits, raccoons and birds, have lower instances of Lyme disease, even though
the tick carrier is common in all the states.
The answer seemed obvious to Ostfeld: Encourage many different animals to live
in the forest. "Ecology should be seen as a crucial ally ... of the health
sciences,'' he said.
David Molyneux, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said
diseases such as leishmaniasis (which causes skin lesions and permanent
damage), river blindness, malaria and sleeping sickness had all become more
common as people cleared forests.
The mosquitoes and flies that spread such diseases adapted quickly to the new
environments, he told the conference. Malaria and sleeping sickness, for
example, are spreading to new parts of Africa as rain forests are cleared.
"Now they are adapting rapidly to cocoa and coffee plantations,'' he said.
"Leishmaniasis is closely associated with mining, logging and road-building.''
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