[Note: This is the thirty-ninth sample from my rough draft of
a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews. These samples are not freestanding
pieces. They will be easier to
understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE
— if you have some free time.]
MEET OUR DISEASES
On the following pages, I’ll be jabbering a bit about
different categories of diseases, and take a quick peek at some common examples. Please remember that the primary purpose of
this book is to compare and contrast wild humans with the less-than-wild mobs
that emerged later — from the perspective that wild was our normal and natural
state, and life as we now know it is the opposite. There is an enormous difference between the
two groups with regard to human health, and with regard to the health of the
family of life.
Big Mama Nature lovingly fine-tuned our evolution. Our ecological job description was to live as
nomadic hunters, scavengers, and foragers who traveled in small groups. Our natural habitat was open grasslands and
forest edges. In this manner, our hominin
ancestors lived for several million years without radically disturbing
fundamental balances in the family of life.
This, of course, is the norm for every member of the family.
Along the way, some clever ancestors got lost and
confused. By settling down, and crowding
together in villages, towns, and cities, they developed a way of life that was
at odds with our job description. Over
time, the quirky experiment grew and grew, and became ferociously unsustainable. We sort of became herd animals, but not in a healthy
wild way.
Herds of wild buffalo and horses have the inherent
intelligence to follow their stomachs and keep moving. They roam over the hill to where the grass is
greener, and leave their shit behind to nurture the grass for future
visits. Herds of city dwellers generate
enormous filth, at the same time they cause irreparable damage to the
ecosystem. This great “advance” in
lifestyle triggers a whopping number of unintended consequences. Let’s take a stroll down Pathogen Lane.
MALNUTRITION
DISEASES
Richard
Manning discussed what paleontologists have learned from old bones. The bones of hunter-gatherers are boring to
study, because most of them were very healthy.
Living in roadless wilderness, amidst man-eating predators, and using
wooden spears to kill large strong animals, led to a lot of broken bones and
premature deaths. Folks did not spend
their lives in climate-controlled compartments, or drive across the land in
large motorized wheelchairs. They
inhaled a lot of smoke from their fires, which likely led to respiratory
problems. In warm regions, they were
more vulnerable to intestinal parasites.
The bones of folks from agricultural societies were more
interesting. Their diet was far less
nutritious than that of hunter-gatherers.
Until the last century, agricultural peasants spent their lives
performing backbreaking labor, living in filthy conditions, and eating a low
quality diet. Many lived on bread and
water alone, or oat porridge. Meat was a
rare treat. This diet often led to
illnesses from mineral and vitamin deficiencies, like pellagra, anemia, and
thyroid problems.
Grain eaters commonly suffered from tooth decay, bone
deformities, malnutrition, osteomyelitis, periostitis, intestinal parasites,
malaria, yaws, syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, anemia, rickets in children,
osteomalacia in adults, slow childhood growth, and short stature among adults. Let’s take a look at a few diseases of
malnutrition.
Rickets
Rickets is a disease of severely malnourished infants and
children. Their bones are soft, are
easily fractured, and can grow abnormally. Rickets is common in a number of
developing nations. We get vitamin D
when we consume foods like butter, eggs, oily fishes, fish liver oils, and
fortified milk. Our skin cells use
sunlight to convert vitamin D into a usable form, which enables our bodies to
properly absorb calcium. When this
doesn’t happen, dental and skeletal deformities can develop — knock-knees,
bowlegs, bulging foreheads, or narrow pelvises that interfere with normal
childbirth. In the early days of the
Industrial Revolution in London, heavy smog, combined with persistent fog
blocked a lot of sunlight. At times, up
to 80 percent of children had symptoms of rickets.
Pellagra
Pellagra is caused by chronic niacin deficiency (vitamin
B3). Its victims suffer from diarrhea,
dermatitis, and dementia. If not
treated, death often occurred in 4 to 5 years.
Pellagra was common prior to the 1920s, at which point folks discovered
that it could be easily cured by a diet that included daily servings of milk,
eggs, or meat.
In northern Italy, the poor lived primarily on boiled
cornmeal, polenta. In the U.S. south,
pellagra was common among poor folks whose diet majored in cornmeal, molasses,
and sowbelly (fat salt pork from the belly of a pig). Pellagra was especially common in orphanages,
sanitariums, asylums, and prisons, according to Burton Hendrick. Between 1906 and 1940 more than 3 million
Americans had pellagra, and more than 100,000 died. Around the world, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands died from pellagra.
Corn (maize) is an incredibly productive crop. It is an excellent storage food when the
kernels are properly dried. Corn is
deficient in two essential amino acids: lysine and tryptophan. Native Americans learned that corn was far
more nutritious when cooked along with an alkali like lye (leached from wood
ashes), or lime (limestone: calcium carbonate).
This unlocked the niacin, making it available to the body. Treated corn is called hominy. A diet that includes both hominy and beans is
even more nutritious.
Some believe that that the invention of hominy was
revolutionary, beginning in the eastern U.S. around A.D. 750 to 800. It greatly increased carrying capacity,
leading to a surge in population, which enabled the rise of Mississippian
civilizations like Cahokia and Kinkaid.
On the downside, hominy eaters experienced far more tooth decay.
Scurvy
Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
in the diet. This vitamin is found in
many fresh fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits, like oranges and
lemons. Potato eaters also get adequate
vitamin C. Before potatoes became a
staple in northern regions, scurvy was common in winter months, when fresh
foods were unavailable. Homo sapiens are
tropical primates, and if we had remained in tropical regions, scurvy would never
have become an issue.
In the old days, when sailors spent months at sea, living on
hard biscuits and salted meats, many got scurvy — until the British discovered
the healing power of limes, and their sailors got the nickname Limeys (lemons
have more C than limes). After several
months of insufficient vitamin C, folks experienced fatigue, and soreness and
stiffness of the joints and lower extremities. Then came bleeding gums, loose
teeth, bleeding under the skin, and personality changes. Untreated, bleeding or infections led to
death.
Beriberi
Beriberi means “extreme weakness.” It is caused by a thiamine (vitamin B1)
deficiency, and leads to impairment of the heart and nervous system, in both
infants and adults. It is common where
diets major in polished (white) rice, and little else. The rice husk is removed to greatly extend
storage life, but the husk contains thiamine.
Beriberi is still common in some locations, like prisons. It’s getting less common in Asia, where many
are now eating better diets. Untreated,
it can cause death. Half of the men in
the Japanese navy got beriberi before 1880, when extra meat, fish, and veggies
were added to their diet.
Cholera
Cholera originated in tropical regions. It is a fecal-oral disease caused by
bacteria. Its primary reservoir is
marine organisms. Sources of infection include
contaminated food, water, and contact with the feces of cholera victims. Symptoms can appear as soon as two hours
after exposure, and victims sometimes die the same day. The most common symptom is diarrhea, up to 3 to
5 gallons per day (10 to 20 l). Once the
bacteria enter the water supply, the disease rapidly spreads.
Victims primarily die from dehydration. When provided with adequate amounts of water,
victims often survive. In severe cases,
treatment with antibiotics and hydration can stop the infection. Some strains of the bacteria have developed multiple
drug resistance (MDR) — they can survive exposure to two or more types of
antibiotics. There are vaccines that can
prevent cholera, but they do not provide lifelong immunity.
The first cholera pandemic began in Bengal, India, in 1816,
and lasted until 1823. So far, there have
been seven global pandemics. The second
global pandemic ran from 1829 to 1851. It
spread to London and Paris. Cholera was
unable to spread to the Americas until 1832, when speedy new steamships enabled
the pathogen to survive the voyage. Once
in Canada, it rapidly spread, transported by boats and railroads. Riverboats carried it down the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers. The Gold Rush
migration carried cholera to California, where it unleashed a diarrhea rush in
1850. Around the world, in the last 200
years, it has killed many millions. Cholera
is still alive and well in the world.
Laurie Garrett revealed a spooky side of cholera. In water or algae, the bacteria can survive
encysted, in a dormant state, for months or years. In the harbor of Lima, Peru, a Chinese ship
dumped bilge water that contained spores of a virulent form of cholera called
El Tor (the bull). People consumed raw
shellfish that were contaminated with El Tor, and developed intense
diarrhea. Before El Tor arrived, Peru
had stopped chlorinating drinking water, because chlorine increases the risk of
cancer. So, in 1991, El Tor eventually
found its way into the water supply, and came out of faucets. It infected 336,000 people in eleven months,
and was carried to the U.S. by infected people who traveled by air.
Cholera is a disease of poor sanitation. Its spread is encouraged by large
populations, dirty water, and by high mobility (airplanes, ships, railroads,
etc.). It would not have been common
among our nomadic wild ancestors.
Typhus
There are several forms of typhus. Epidemic typhus is a bacterial disease spread
by lice. It originated in temperate
regions. One to three weeks following
exposure, flu-like symptoms occur. Then,
five to nine days later, a rash appears, and spreads over most of the body. “Typhus” means confused, because many victims
became delirious. Without treatment, up
to 40 percent die.
Lice transfer the bacteria from infected humans to other
humans. No other animal species is a
typhus reservoir. When a typhus-carrying
louse bites, it takes some blood, and leaves behind a small gift of poop. The bite itches, the person scratches it, and
scratching pushes the bacteria through the bite opening in the skin.
During the Great Famine, many Irish boarded boats to North
America. Joining them for the voyage
were lice-ridden rats. The boats became
known as “coffin ships” because they delivered the typhus epidemic of 1847 to
North America. The immigrants were
quarantined on their ships, on an island, or held in large “fever sheds.” Tens of thousands died at sea, or in
quarantine.
Typhus thrives in crowds.
Sometimes it was called jail fever.
It was especially common during wartime.
Soldiers had little access to soap, hot water, baths, or clean
clothing. They had plenty of company
from rats and bugs. Typhus took a big
toll during the Russian Revolution (1917–1923), causing 30 million cases with
more than 3 million deaths. During World
War Two, scientists discovered that lice could be controlled by spraying the soldiers
with DDT. This kept them bug free for
months.
In the good old days, bathing was considered to be
dangerous. Prior to modern water
systems, carrying enough water for a bath was a lot of work. The whole family took turns using the same
bath water. In the summer, people could
bathe in lakes or streams, but the arrival of autumn chilled interest in
washing. In the 1800s, even the rich got
typhus, because everyone had lice.
Typhus can be controlled by better hygiene, insecticides, and
antibiotics. No vaccines are currently
available to prevent typhus. It thrives
in conditions of crowding, filth, and poverty — civilization. It would not have been common among our
nomadic wild ancestors.
Typhoid
Typhoid is a bacterial disease that originated in temperate
regions. It is caused by consuming food
or water contaminated with fecal material.
Shellfish living in dirty water can carry the bacteria. So can raw fruit or vegetables fertilized
with humanure, or contaminated milk, cheese, or ice cream. On one milk route in Springfield,
Massachusetts, 150 consumers caught typhoid, and 25 died. Flies can deliver typhoid to your food. Typhoid declined when motor vehicles replaced
horses, and the streets were no longer loaded with manure and flies.
Symptoms appear six to thirty days after exposure, when
victims get a high fever that lasts several days, or sometimes months. The name typhoid means “resembling typhus”
because it had similar symptoms. Not
until 1837 did science discover that typhoid and typhus were different
diseases.
Mary Mallon carried the typhoid pathogen, but it never made
her sick. Working as a cook, she
infected at least 50 people, of whom 3 died.
Earning the nickname Typhoid Mary, she had to be forcibly quarantined
for 26 years, which really pissed her off, because she wasn’t ill.
Typhoid is a popular disease in regions where dense
populations dump their sewage into their drinking water supplies. It is also encouraged by flies and
filth. Horses release 15 to 35 pounds of
manure daily (7 to 16 kg). In 1900,
London streets were home to 50,000 horses.
New York had 100,000. Dense
clouds of flies feasted on the yummy crap.
The invention of the automobile actually had one benefit — by clearing
the streets of horses, there was a sharp reduction in typhoid cases.
Typhoid still exists.
Worldwide there are 21 million cases annually, with 200,000 deaths. It can be treated with antibiotics, but the
bacteria have developed resistance to some of these drugs. Since 1896, there have been typhoid vaccines,
but they don’t provide lifelong immunity.
Good sanitation and chlorinated drinking water can prevent the
spread.
Typhoid thrives in conditions of crowding, filth, and poverty
— civilization. It would not have been
common among our nomadic wild ancestors.
Bubonic
Plague
Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease that originated in
temperate regions. It first entered
history with the Plague of Justinian (541–542) which struck the Eastern Roman
Empire, and initially killed about 25 million people. Grain ships from Egypt carried infected rats
to Constantinople (Istanbul), where up to 5,000 people per day died. The epidemic returned several times over the
following 200 years, and eventually killed about 50 million. In the year 500, the estimated population of
the world was between 190 and 206 million.
The second great pandemic was the Black Death, which
originated in central Asia, spread through China (1331) and then hammered
Europe (1347–1350), possibly killing 50 million, about one third of the people. Periodic plague outbreaks persisted in Europe
for the next 350 years.
The third great pandemic began in Yunnan China in 1855, and
spread into India. It killed 12 million
people in China and India, and persisted until 1959. In 2015, the Centers for Disease Control
reported 15 cases of plague in the United States. Around the world there are several thousand
cases each year, and most are cured with antibiotics. Today, many types of ground dwelling rodents
are reservoirs of the pathogen.
Fleas acquire the pathogen by biting the rodents, and then
pass it to humans with a bite. A pustule
forms, and then the lymph nodes in the armpits, groin, and/or neck swell. There is bleeding under the skin, creating
purple blotches, or buboes. Eventually
the nervous system breaks down, there is intense pain, and then death — usually
on the fourth day. Death was often
preceded by violent fever, vomiting blood, convulsions, and bizarre body
movement known as the danse macabre — the dance of death.
Bubonic plague thrives in conditions of crowding, filth, and
poverty — civilization. It would not
have been common among our nomadic wild ancestors. Sometimes it mutated into pneumonic plague,
which could be spread to others with a sneeze, was extremely contagious, and
always fatal (so outbreaks were brief).
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient bacterial disease that we may
have acquired from ruminants. The time,
place, and way that tuberculosis originated remains the subject of controversy. Maybe a third of humans are infected with
tuberculosis, but most have no symptoms, and are not contagious because their
immune systems keep it under control. If
the bacteria grow, a latent infection can become active. It can then pass directly from person to
person via coughing, sneezing, spitting, or speaking. Symptoms include fever, frequent coughing,
night sweats, weight loss, and bloody sputum.
In the nineteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution spurred
the growth of crowded cities, TB was the main cause of death in Europe and
North America. Prime victims were the
malnourished who lived in damp conditions.
There was no cure. In the
twentieth century, it killed an estimated 100 million people. It is quite contagious. A flight attendant with tuberculosis spread
it to 23 passengers during several flights.
Tuberculosis can be treated with antibiotics, but drugs are
becoming less effective, because a number of tuberculosis strains are
developing multiple drug resistance (MDR), a condition that is common in hospitals,
prisons, and homeless shelters. The
World Health Organization reported that in 2014, there were 9.6 million cases
of active tuberculosis, which resulted in 1.5 million deaths.
Of those cases in 2014, 480,000 were MDR-TB, more than half
of which occurred in India, China, and Russia.
Of these MDR cases, about 9.7 percent were XDR-TB — extensively drug
resistant tuberculosis. Recently a new
variant is emerging, TDR-TB — totally drug resistant tuberculosis, which has
been found in India, Iran, and Italy.
For the last 50 years, there has been little interest in
developing new first-line drugs for treating tuberculosis. TB is a disease that mainly affects the
extremely poor; folks who can’t afford to buy highly profitable wonder
drugs.
Tuberculosis thrives in conditions of crowding and poverty —
civilization. It would not have been
common among our nomadic wild ancestors.
Anthrax
Anthrax is an ancient bacterial disease that primarily
infects plant-eating mammals, especially animals that live in herds, like
horses, cattle, sheep, bison, reindeer, and oxen. Anthrax is spooky because it creates spores
that can survive for centuries, even in harsh conditions. Birds that dine on infected carcasses can
move the spores to other regions. Moving
streams can carry spores downstream.
Spores have been found on every continent, including Antarctica.
Humans and other animals can become infected by inhaling
spores, or eating contaminated meat.
Humans can get it by handling wool or hides. Bacteria can enter via broken skin. Once a dormant spore has entered the body, it
can reactivate and spur an infection.
Michaeleen Doucleff reported on an anthrax
outbreak in a remote region of Siberia, where melting permafrost exposed a
reindeer that died from anthrax 75 years earlier. Old spores from the dead reindeer then led to
the infection of 2,000 reindeer, dozens of people got sick, and one child
died. Because livestock are a primary
source of food for humans, high mortality in the animals can lead to
starvation. When traction animals die,
fields can’t be plowed.
Prior to 1900, hundreds of thousands of people died from
anthrax every year. The disease cannot
be transmitted human-to-human, but when someone dies from it, the mass of
bacilli in the corpse can become a source for infection. The first effective vaccine was developed in
1881. A second generation is available
now, but has severe side effects in one percent of patients. The disease is treatable with antibiotics.
Anthrax is encouraged by the confinement of animal herds,
like in livestock operations. Anthrax in
humans is encouraged by regularly having close contact with herd animals. It was probably less common among our nomadic
wild ancestors. Finding a bunch of dead
animals may have encouraged caution.
Humans are tropical primates, and parasites thrive in a
tropical climate that is close to our body temperature. In a warm environment, it is easier for them
to move between humans and other animals.
One in every four humans provides a nice home and warm meals for
parasitic worms. Parasitic diseases can
cause chronic, long-term, debilitating conditions.
Our wild ancestors in tropical regions certainly had intimate
relationships with parasites, but probably on a scale far less than today. The tropics have been substantially disrupted
by logging, herding, agriculture, poverty, poor sanitation, and explosive
population growth. A warming climate
suggests a bright future for the parasites.
Because tropical climates don’t have cold winters, they nurture
greater biodiversity, which provides prime conditions for parasitic
diseases. Parasites include protozoans,
roundworms, flatworms, filarial worms, and amoeba. We’ll take a closer look at a few parasitic
diseases in the following pages.
Malaria
For humans, the deadliest creatures on Earth are not large
carnivores, but mosquitoes. Malaria is
an ancient tropical disease caused by protozoans that are transmitted to humans
via mosquitoes. The disease destroys red
blood cells, and an infection can last for years. There are five varieties of malaria, caused
by five different parasites. The most
deadly variety is caused by Plasmodium
falciparum, which originated in birds. Humans provide the sole reservoir for malaria
parasites, and mosquitoes transfer them from the infected to the non-infected,
so dense population encourages the disease.
Following exposure, the incubation period is 7 to 30 days. Early symptoms include fever, chills,
headache, sweats, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting. Complications can include brain infection,
kidney failure, liver problems, pulmonary edema, coma, and death. Some believe that malaria has killed more
people than any other disease.
Mark
Nathan Cohen noted that malaria and yellow fever were originally treetop
diseases that infected non-human primates.
As humans cleared forests for agriculture, they became vulnerable to
these diseases. Malaria was rare among
nomadic people, but common in farming communities, especially where rice was
grown in flooded paddies (mosquito incubators).
Malaria and yellow fever were transferred to the Americas via
the slave trade. In 1864, George
Perkins Marsh noted that malaria followed deforestation. In Virginia and the Carolinas, malaria was
rare in forested areas, but common in cleared places, especially near the flooded
rice paddies in South Carolina and Georgia.
He wrote, “The cultivation of rice is so prejudicial to health
everywhere that nothing but the necessities of a dense population can justify
the sacrifice of life it costs in countries where it is pursued.”
John
Perlin described how the ancient Greeks cleared forests to create wheat
fields. Deforestation led to severe
erosion that filled deep harbors with soil, creating malarial marshes. Malaria was so bad that port cities had to be
abandoned.
The ancient Romans repeated the same mistake. For centuries, wealthy Romans spent their
summers at higher elevations to avoid malaria.
Geoffrey
Marks noted that in the eleventh century, the Germans who conquered Rome
declared it to be uninhabitable, and abandoned it. For centuries, malaria made Rome almost
uninhabitable in the summers, until Mussolini drained the Pontine Marshes in
the 1930s.
Today, a billion people live in malaria country. Mosquitoes are developing resistance to
insecticides, and the malarial parasites are developing resistance to every
antimalarial drug. No vaccines are
available. Malaria is untreatable in
some regions. The World Health
Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2010 there were 219 million cases of
malaria (mostly in Africa), resulting in an estimated 660,000 deaths. WHO models indicate that a global temperature
rise of 2 to 3°C will put 3 to 5 percent more people at risk of malaria
(several hundred million).
Margaret Humphreys noted that three types of malaria were
imported to the U.S. by immigrants from Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and
African slaves. It spread as far north
as Tennessee and North Carolina. Slaves
and mosquitoes mingled together in flooded rice fields in South Carolina, and
then the mosquitoes infected whites. By
the 1680s, whites were getting hit hard, especially the young. Many families fled north during the summer
months.
Schistosomiasis
Schistosomiasis (bilharzia) is the second most common
parasitic disease, after malaria. It is
caused by parasitic worms that live in freshwater snails. The worms emerge from the snails and burrow
through the skin of humans standing in the water, often in irrigated
fields. These worms can live in your
body for 40 years. As their eggs move
through your organs, they cause bleeding.
Infection sometimes results in bladder cancer, and liver disease. The parasite returns to the water in the
feces of victims. It’s nearly impossible
to eliminate the snails, but medications can eliminate worm infestations in the
body. Where schistosomiasis is common,
many die young.
Sleeping
Sickness
Sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) is a tropical disease
that originated in Africa. It is caused
by a family of protozoa named Trypanosoma
brucei. Originally, sleeping
sickness was transferred from wild antelopes to humans via tsetse flies. The protozoa did not sicken the
antelope. Amazingly, the tsetse can
drink its own weight in blood in seconds.
For a long while, humans were little affected by sleeping
sickness, because they didn’t live in close contact with wild animals. But, once upon a time, the herders of
domesticated cattle got really tired of living in warm and green ecosystems,
because they were hotbeds of malaria.
So, to escape from the mosquito hordes, they packed up and moved to a
dryer region — tsetse country.
In tsetse country, the native African wild mammals were
resistant to the disease, but livestock brought in from elsewhere were
not. Cattle and herders were infected
with sleeping sickness, and the cattle were hit extremely hard. Slave traders carried the sleeping sickness protozoa
to uninfected regions.
The disease messes up the mind and body in many ways, but the
most obvious symptom is that victims sleep a lot, and can be very difficult to
awaken. Left untreated, all victims fall
into a coma and die. There are two forms
of sleeping sickness, caused by two different types of protozoa. More than 98 percent of the cases are caused
by the weaker one, which can take three years to kill the victim. The stronger form is more virulent, killing
the victim within months.
In 1859, a sleeping sickness epidemic around Lake Chad was so
severe that the town of Digazore, Nigeria was deserted for 50 years. Between 1896 and 1906, sleeping sickness
killed 500,000 in the Congo. Between
1898 and 1908, it killed 200,000 of the 300,000 living along the northeast shores of
Lake Victoria in Uganda. In 1952,
Charles Winslow wrote that most of Tanganyika was uninhabitable because of the
large tsetse fly belt.
In numerous tsetse hotbeds, trying to graze cattle was not
worth the effort, because too many died.
People had to get their protein via foods from elsewhere. On the plus side, the flies protected the
indigenous wildlife. William
McNeill wrote, “It is mainly because sleeping sickness was and remains so
devastating to human populations that the ungulate herds of the African savanna
have survived to the present.”
Insecticides cannot eliminate the tsetse flies because they
inhabit large regions. Eliminating the
wildlife that are hosts to the parasites is not an option. Health experts expect that a warming climate
is likely to open up new frontiers for tsetse flies. Currently, they are only in Africa.
River
Blindness
River blindness (onchocerciasis) is caused by an infestation
of filarial worms that colonize the eyeballs.
In some areas of Africa, up to 30 percent of adults are blind. Humans acquire the parasites via bites from
black flies, which breed in warm rivers.
The flies are hard to exterminate, because some can travel up to 400 miles
(640 km) in one day.
Elephantiasis
Lymphatic filariasis is commonly known as elephantiasis. When humans donate blood to mosquitoes and
black flies, the insects transmit roundworms to the humans. Infection usually occurs in childhood, and
eventually results in damage to the lymphatic system. Untreated, the legs and scrotum of the
victims can swell to enormous size. Drug
therapy and surgery can treat worm infestations. Intensive insecticide spraying can reduce the
flies and mosquitoes.
Chagas’
Disease
Chagas’ disease is caused by parasite named Trypanosoma cruzi. This protozoa is usually spread by kissing
bugs, and it has a reservoir in wild and domestic animals. The bugs first bite an infected person, then
bite a healthy person, and dump some feces by the bite. Scratching the bite rubs the feces into the
wound, and the parasites move into their new home, where they might reside for
decades. Some victims experience cardiac
or intestinal complications. Chagas’
disease is common in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Seven to eight million have the disease, and
it causes 12,500 deaths per year.
Viruses are not living organisms. They are segments of protein-coated genetic
material (DNA or RNA) that can infect the living cells of plants, animals, or
bacteria. When infected cells reproduce,
the offspring carry the virus. There are
millions of types of viruses.
They can be transmitted by insects, coughing and sneezing,
feces, body fluids, person-to-person contact, or via eating or drinking. Some viruses can infect the cells of a few
different species, and others can infect many.
Yellow
Fever
Yellow fever is a tropical disease caused by a mosquito-borne
virus. The virus originated in forest
primates, who remain the primary hosts. It
is a hemorrhagic fever. About 15 percent
of victims advance to the second phase of the disease, in which they bleed from
the mouth and eyes, and vomit blood. Without
treatment, up to 20 percent of victims die.
This can increase to 50 percent in severe epidemics.
The Aedes aegypti species of mosquitoes carries the yellow
fever virus. A tropical village could go
decades without a case of yellow fever, because the mosquitoes stayed in the
jungle, feeding on marmosets and monkeys.
Cutting a stand of trees could spark an epidemic, by bringing mosquitoes
closer to the ground, to breed in pools of water on the stumps.
Aedes aegypti can’t survive in a chilly climate. They have migrated out of Africa, and now
enjoy life in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. They are thrilled to hear news about global
warming, and they urge all humans to increase their carbon-emitting habits,
please! Drive like crazy! Fly everywhere! Recently, they have been found as far north
as Sacramento and New York City. Yellow
fever was far less common in the days before our ancestors became forest
molesters, farmers, and city folks.
There is no cure for yellow fever, but a preventive vaccine
was developed in 1938. Over time many
Africans have developed immunity to it, and can carry the virus without getting
sick. Non-Africans have not been so
lucky; they die like flies when the virus comes to visit. Anyway, when the good white Christians
brought African slaves to the New World, yellow fever came with them. Neither Native Americans nor white colonists
had any immunity at all. A virgin land
epidemic exploded.
Geoffrey Marks
reported that there were epidemics in the U.S. northeast from 1686 to 1832, but
it was far more prevalent in the south. For
example, epidemics hit Charleston, South Carolina in 1699, 1706, 1711, 1728,
1732, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1795, 1798, and 1799.
In 1820, one-third of the people in Savannah, Georgia died. Forest clearing and numerous rice paddies
provided abundant habitat for mosquitoes.
Today, vaccines keep the disease under control in many regions.
Influenza
Influenza is a viral disease that originated in temperate
regions. It can be highly contagious,
and some variants can be highly lethal.
It often mutates into new variants, and many experts are concerned that
a new deadly influenza pandemic is quite likely, at some point in time.
It’s odd that many people have heard about the Black Death
pandemic of 650 years ago, but far fewer know about the global influenza
pandemic of 1918. We prefer to forget
it. At a time when world population was
about 1.7 billion, the flu infected 500 million, and 50 to 100 million
died. It spread around the world in just
two months, in an era before commercial air travel. Doctors were helpless to treat it. Some feared the end of civilization.
After a few days of aches and pains, victims would start
bleeding from their ears, nose, or eyes.
Their lungs filled with blood, and their skin turned purple. Some called it the Purple Death. Folks that appeared healthy at breakfast were
dead by evening. Oddly, mortality was
highest among healthy adults between the ages of 20 to 40. Some believe that the flu didn’t kill
them. They died because their healthy
immune systems freaked out, flooded their bodies with proteins that caused
inflammation. Children and old folks had
less robust immune systems, and survived in greater numbers.
Richard
Collier wrote an unforgettable play-by-play description of the 1918
pandemic, taken from news accounts of the day.
Quarantines didn’t work because infected people can appear healthy for a
few days. In 1918, ships known to be
carrying infected people were allowed to enter ports. The SS Niagara took infected passengers to
New Zealand, resulting in 6,680 deaths.
The Canadian Pacific railroad carried the flu across the continent,
infecting each city where the train stopped.
Some victims went into deep comas, with no pulse or breathing — and then
revived in their closed coffin.
Dr. Michael Greger
wrote that wild ducks and influenza viruses peacefully lived together for 100
million years. If humans had never
domesticated ducks, influenza might be unknown today. Unfortunately, ducks were domesticated 4,500
years ago in China, moved onto rice paddies, where they were close to chickens,
pigs, and humans that were not immune to the viruses. Because China raises 13 billion chickens, 2
billion waterfowl, and 500 million hogs in close contact with humans and other
species, it provides perfect conditions for encouraging the mutation of
viruses, and their spread to other species.
When a highly lethal, highly contagious mutant emerges, wild
migratory birds can carry it to faraway regions, like North America, via
Alaska. They poop in the water, and
other species acquire the viruses when drinking. It’s vital that we change the way we raise
animals, but there is little interest.
Especially bad are Chinese fish farms where hog, chicken, and human
wastes are used as feed.
When the next highly contagious, highly lethal variant
appears, existing vaccines may not prevent it.
Flu viruses can rapidly mutate, creating a moving target for vaccine
makers. Creating a new vaccine can take
six to eight months. Then it has to be
mass produced and distributed. By then,
the pandemic will be over.
Influenza is the result of animal domestication. Its spread is encouraged by dense
populations, high mobility, and living with others indoors. It would not have been common among our
nomadic wild ancestors. The last words
of one 1918 flu victim in Guatemala were, “We die of the blessings of
civilization.”
Smallpox
Smallpox is a viral disease that originated in temperate
regions. It is highly contagious and
highly lethal, especially in children under two years old. It does not spare the wealthy. Smallpox is transmitted via face-to-face
contact, exposure to infected body fluids, or by touching contaminated items
like clothing or bedding. Following
exposure, the incubation period is 10 to 14 days, which allowed infected people
to travel to distant villages before discovering they were sick.
Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, back pain, and
vomiting. Red spots then spread over the
body, then turn into small blisters, which turn into scabs, and then leave
behind deep pitted scars. Most victims
over ten years old survive, but some varieties of smallpox are almost always
fatal. Once infected, there is no cure,
but the symptoms can be treated.
There is evidence that smallpox existed before 1000 B.C. in
Egypt, India, and China. It may have
appeared much earlier. Many believe that
the virus originated in cows, but others suspect camels. Travelers from Eurasia carried the virus to
the Americas and Australia, where natives had zero immunity and suffered
fatality rates up to 90 percent. In the
twentieth century, an estimated 300 to 500 million people died from smallpox.
No other animal provides a reservoir for the smallpox
virus. Only humans carried it. Because of this, science was able to
eradicate the disease via a successful vaccination program. Smallpox was eradicated in the U.S. in 1972,
and the last case occurred in Somalia in 1977.
Smallpox almost certainly was a consequence of the animal
domestication. Experts do not agree on
the source, but most say camels, and some say cattle. It would not have been common among our
nomadic wild ancestors. They probably
never experienced it.
Rinderpest
Rinderpest is a viral disease that affects ruminants — hoofed
animals like cattle, goats, sheep, antelopes, deer, and giraffes. It is the most virulent of all livestock
diseases. Because livestock are a
primary source of food for humans, high mortality in the animals can lead to
starvation in humans. When beasts of
burden die, fields can’t be plowed, and carts do not move.
Rinderpest is highly contagious and has high mortality rates. When an animal is infected, it takes 3 to 15
days for symptoms to appear. They
include high fever, diarrhea, and skin lesions.
Death follows in 6 to 12 days. All
of a sick animal’s fluids are contagious, including tears, urine, saliva, snot,
and excrement.
Andrew Rimas noted that the virus apparently originated in
East Asia. Mongols carried it west to
the Ukraine in 1240, and it eventually spread as far as Scotland. In 1865, a rinderpest epidemic in Europe
killed up to 200 million cattle. In
1885, infected cattle were shipped by Italian soldiers to Eritrea, and by 1890,
92 percent of the cattle in East Africa were dead. It took a similar toll on wild ruminants,
like buffalo, bison, oryx, elands, and the greater kudu. The Maasai are a tribe of cattle herders, and
two-thirds of them perished from starvation.
Large feline predators starved.
In the absence of large herbivores, trees began to spread into the
savannah.
The rinderpest virus likely originated in wild herd animals,
and it is likely more than 5,000 years old.
It’s closely related to the measles virus, and is probably older. Human populations were not large enough to
maintain endemic measles until a thousand years ago. Humans can’t get rinderpest, and other
animals can’t get measles. In 2011,
rinderpest went extinct in the wild, because of a successful vaccination
program.
Rinderpest thrived in dense populations of confined
domesticated livestock. Our nomadic wild
ancestors probably did not observe often it among wild ruminants, if ever.
Measles
Measles is a highly infectious viral disease that originated
in temperate regions. It spreads from
person to person via coughs and sneezes.
Ten to twelve days after exposure, symptoms appear, including inflamed
eyes, fever, cough, and runny nose. Three
to five days after the start of symptoms, a red rash spreads over the body,
beginning at the face. Complications
include pneumonia, brain inflammation, blindness, and diarrhea.
Most of those who survive a measles infection will be immune
for the rest of their lives. Therefore,
measles needs a continuous supply of victims who are not immune, namely young
children. Of those who are not immune,
about ninety percent will become infected when exposed to the virus.
Humans are the sole reservoir for measles. It cannot persist in populations of less than
250,000 to 500,000 people, it will die out.
Measles was first noted in written records in the tenth century, as
European cities grew to densities sufficient to provide a good home for the
virus.
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey notes, “It has been estimated that
between 1840 and 1990, measles killed about 200 million people worldwide.” A measles vaccine was introduced in
1963. Once upon a time, the World Health
Organization hoped to eliminate measles by 2020.
Measles thrives in dense populations and poverty. It would not have been common among our
nomadic wild ancestors.
NEW
VIRAL DISEASES
New types of viral diseases are now appearing, as humans move
deeper into remote areas of the tropics.
Loggers are destroying forests, and bush meat hunters are selling a
variety of wild primates for food.
Because humans are Old World primates, we are more vulnerable to the
diseases of other Old World primates, like Ebola, Marburg, and AIDS. We are less closely related to the monkeys of
the Americas, so we are not so susceptible to their diseases.
Viruses are notorious for having a tendency to mutate, like
the influenza virus. Wild monkeys are
susceptible to a highly lethal airborne virus that gives them cancer. The virus has not mutated into a form that
humans are vulnerable to — yet. Ebola
and Marburg are highly lethal, but the viruses that cause them have not
succeeded in permanently established themselves in human populations — yet. Folks who work in labs with monkeys are
getting monkey diseases. Idiots have
experimented with transplanting baboon organs into humans.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is contagious. When it is untreated, it can lead to acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disease that has killed about 40 million. HIV is probably a mutation of the simian
immunodeficiency virus (SIV) which is carried harmlessly by chimps. The bushmeat business now operates at an
industrial scale, and bushmeat vendors are often exposed to the blood of SIV
infected chimps. The first
well-documented case of AIDS was in 1959 in the Congo. By the late 1970s, HIV was in the U.S. It spread rapidly among the gay
community. HIV researchers at the
National Institutes of Health had to keep redefining the meaning of “multiple
sex partners.” It was 20 partners per
year in 1975, 50 in 1976, 100 in 1978, and 500 in 1980. One fun-loving lad claimed 3,000.
Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a viral disease of humans and
other primates. It is active in tropical
Africa, and outbreaks tend to occur when heavy rains follow a long dry
spell. In advanced stages of the
infection, victims bleed internally and externally. The virus is transmitted via skin-to-skin
contact, and exposure to patient’s body fluids and excretions. Usually, mortality is 50 percent, but can run
as high as 90 percent. Fruit bats are
the likely reservoir of the virus, which does not make them sick. A recent epidemic in West Africa ran from
2013 to 2016, with 28,657 cases and 11,325 deaths.
Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a deadly viral disease that
infects humans and non-human primates.
It is active in the arid woodlands of equatorial Africa, and fruit bats
are the reservoir for the virus. It
typically infects people who visit bat-infested caves, or work in mines. It is transmitted via skin-to-skin contact,
and exposure to patient’s body fluids and excretions. Its symptoms are the same as Ebola. Victims die from the failure of multiple
organs, not hemorrhage. A severe
outbreak in Angola in 2004–2005 had a mortality rate of 90 percent. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has
approved no vaccines for Marburg.
SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is a viral disease
first identified in 2003. Symptoms
appear two to ten days after contact, with fever and respiratory problems. Severe cases can result in respiratory
failure. In 2003, nine percent of all
victims died. For those older than 50,
almost half died. Scientists believe
that it was passed to humans via palm civets, animals sold for human
consumption in Guangdong, China. It has
also been found in raccoon dogs, ferret badgers, and domestic cats. The natural reservoir for the virus may be
bats, which carry it harmlessly. The
virus is apparently transferred when different species are in close contact, as
they are in Chinese markets — conditions far different from normal life in the
wild.
Lassa hemorrhagic fever is a viral disease of humans and
non-human primates. It is endemic in
western Africa, where it infects 100,000 to 300,000 each year, and kills about
5,000. The reservoir for the virus is a
type of rat that commonly colonizes human settlements, and feeds on stored
food. Infected rats excrete the virus in
their urine and feces. Humans are
infected via inhalation, open wounds, or ingestion of contaminated foods. Most infections are mild and not diagnosed,
but twenty percent can get serious. The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved no vaccines for the Lassa virus.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a viral disease that
triggered a global pandemic in early 2020.
It has the potential to become catastrophic. The future has yet to be written.
DEGENERATIVE
DISEASE
Wikipedia lists some examples of degenerative diseases —
cancer, heart disease, diabetes, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s, Lou
Gehrig’s disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), inflammatory
bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease,
rheumatoid arthritis, muscular dystrophy, and many more.
I’m not going to say much about these diseases, because they
are all around us, fully out in the open, and I’ve already said enough to
express my views about health among the wild and non-wild. I’m wary about sharing long term health trend
statistics, because they are probably inaccurate and misleading.
In 2007, Clive
Ponting wrote that one in three Americans contracts cancer, compared with
one in 27 in 1900. Many folks who died
in 1900, in big cities and rural farmhouses, were not included in regional or
national records of cancer deaths. Not
all regions kept records. Back in the
simpler days of paper and fountain pen technology, if an elderly person did not
die violently, the death was likely attributed to “natural causes.” Nothing to see here. Have a nice day!
So, I’m going to share one source I trust, and call it a
day. Over many years, journalist John Gunther
travelled 40,000 miles in Africa, and visited most of the 44 countries or
political subdivisions, including 105 towns.
He interviewed many experts and officials, and wrote a 950 page book,
which was published in 1953.
When he was in the Sahara region, he wrote: “At the El Goléa
hospital the resident doctor told us that, in ten years, he has never had a
case of appendicitis in a native, or seen a cancer. Elsewhere in Africa we subsequently found
doctors who reported this same extraordinary thing.” In Bantu country, he wrote: “Cancer is almost
unknown among the Africans, and diseases of filth, like cholera and plague, are
uncommon.” In French Equatorial Africa,
he wrote: “Dr. Albert Schweitzer has never seen appendicitis in an African; and
cancer is virtually unknown.”
