Evan Ratliff points to a paper published today in Nature. In it, Jared Diamond, geographer and author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, teamed up with (recent Wired profile subject) Nathan Wolfe and Clair Dunavan, biologists at UCLA, to examine the origins of infectious disease. The researchers combed the scientific literature on about 25 significant viruses, from hepatitis B to influenza A, to AIDS, to smallpox, and work to explain how some deadly viruses become endemic in humans, and others don’t.
Their over-arching conclusion, unfortunately, is that we know pitifully little about the origins of diseases that have shaped human history. To reverse this, Diamond et. al. propose an “origins initiative” to study the beginnings of a dozen of the deadliest agents. The authors also add a point that won't be suprising to people who've read about Wolfe's research:
"Most major human infectious diseases have animal origins, and we continue to be bombarded by novel animal pathogens. Yet there is no ongoing systematic global effort to monitor for pathogens emerging from animals to humans."
