Community and Population Health with PowerWeb: Health and Human Performance

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Now in its eighth edition, Community and Population Health provides a comprehensive introduction to the four areas of community health - Preventative Medicine, Public Health, School Health, and Self-care. Reflecting the recent emergence of population health in the community health field, Community and Population Health represents the concept that many populations of concern in health programs are not solely defined by geographic location. This revision continues to present information within a problem-solving framework as exemplified in the issue boxes and case studies throughout the text.

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It does a fairly basic job........2007-09-04

It does well at giving an over view of how community health promotion works in real life. However, it can be a little pie in the sky.

Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease

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Will the mental health of humans 'born of the Pleistocene' be our downfall?
Thought provoking
This book sets the agenda for the 21st century
Ecology - human, animal, vegetable and planetary

Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease
Tony McMichael
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521004942

Book Description

Charting the relentless trajectory of humankind across time and geography, Tony McMichael highlights the changing survival patterns of our ancient ancestors, who roamed the African savannahs several million years ago, to today's populous, industrialized, and globalized world. McMichael explores the changes in human biology, culture, and surrounding environments that have influenced patterns of health and disease over the course of humankind's history, arguing that the health of populations is primarily a product of the interaction of human societies with the wider environment, its various ecosystems, and other life-support processes. Tony McMichael is professor of epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has held positions in Australia, USA, and UK, and has taught widely in Asia, Africa, and Europe. He has advised WHO, UNEP, the World Bank and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on public health issues. His previous book, Planetary Overload (Cambridge University Press, 1993) was a widely acclaimed and influential account of global environmental change and the health of the human species.

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This compelling account charts the relentless trajectory of humankind, and its changing survival and disease patterns, across place and time from when our ancient ancestors roamed the African Savannah to today's populous, industrialised, globalising world. This expansion of human frontiers - geographic, climatic, cultural and technological - has encountered frequent setbacks from disease, famine and dwindling resources. The social and environmental transformations wrought by agrarianism, industrialisation, fertility control, social modernisation, urbanisation and mass consumption have profoundly affected patterns of health and disease. Today, as life expectancies rise, the planet's ecosystems are being damaged by the combined weight of population size and intensive economic activity. Global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion and loss of biodiversity pose large-scale hazards to human health and survival. Recognising this, can we achieve a transition to sustainability? This and other profound questions underlie this chronicle of expansive human activity, social change, environmental impact and their health consequences.

Customer Reviews:

Will the mental health of humans 'born of the Pleistocene' be our downfall?.......2006-11-22

While the author does mention the issue of mental health in relationship to our wacked-out species within the planet's growing urban population, I think he misses an opportunity to consider the obvious that the human ecologist Paul Shepard covered in his book NATURE AND MANDESS: our species developed into what it is biologically and psychologically in the Pleistocene. When that 'world' ended thousands of years ago, our species--in the blink of eye evolutionarily speaking--was not equipped in its brain to deal with the changes. The birhrate, and humane methods of raising children changed over night as well. Shepard seems to argue that we literally went 'nuts' as a result (agriculture, wars, walled chaotic cities, shorter life spans of dubious quality during the rise of ag, psychotic leaders, strange other-worldly monotheistic religious-belief systems, George Bush..need I go on?)
I bring up Shepard because this author is aware of his work. McMichael says on page 21: "We can thus understand, says Shepard, the inner human needs for contact with wilderness, with animal species, and with symbolic place. To depart from the conditions, the rhythms, and the interdependence of the natural world is both to stunt our own human essence and to risk damaging the environment's support systems."

Here is the health/environment connection that McMichael only alludes to but which may end up being THE most critical:
Our species--now alomost completely devoid of ANY connection to a rapidly disappearing natural environment--, and which is now rapidly cramming itself into urban slums when it's not waging wars,(See Davis, Planet of Slums), has virtually gone crazy, will continue to get crazier, and because of such large-scale 'mental illness' if you will, has little hope of gettig the 'treatment' Shepard called for in his book.

The prescriptions and predictions in McMichael's book are no more or less than what one finds in other recent evironmental books (i.e., will we use our brains and survive, or use our brains to kill ourselves?) Perhaps the question is more accurately: can a neurotic species like man ever regain its mental health in time to save a dying planet?

Thought provoking.......2005-01-28

I have read this book twice - not because I found it difficult to read but because it contains so many layers of knowledge that you can think about once and again. What the book gave me was an understanding of the current ecological global situation and its implications for health, but also many "cognitive tools" to increase my understanding of the science behind the facts.

This book sets the agenda for the 21st century.......2001-12-31

McMichael's synthesis is the evolutionary synthesis and he is ruthless in his rigour. People are humans ... are Homo sapiens ... are one of the primates ... one of the animals ... one of the planet's living species. By any objective criteria humans have reached plague proportions and our future is bleak.

McMichael takes Darwin's theory of natural selection, with its three elements, variation, competition and differential reproductive success and extends Darwin's approach using the more recent ideas of self-organizing complexity and of emergent properties.

He considers the way humans have diverged in the last 10,000 years from the pattern established over 5 million years of evolution. This diversion has (a) lead to many diseases and unhealthy conditions and (b) modified the local and global environment in ways which have clear health implications for the human species.

I do not have space here to go through his description of the diseases and conditions, so will merely list some of them and refer you to the book for an illuminating, scientific discussion of their causes, why they have become more common over the past half century and their possible treatments. Auto-immune diseases, polio, childhood asthma and hay fever, inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, insulin-dependent (childhood onset) diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lactose intolerance, skin cancer.

McMichael also deals with the contentious issue of genetically modified foods. This is one of the best parts of the book as it takes the non-specialist reader carefully through the underlying science and presents the pros and cons of GM. McMichael invokes the 'precautionary principle' to come down - at the present time - against GM, an unusual position for a trained scientist. His position is based solely on science, not on emotion, tradition, or any mystical notion of what is "natural".

The book also deals with the pressures human population is putting on the survival of all the other species on the planet. Here he brings up to date the work of Joel Cohen's 1995 book (How Many People Can Earth Support) and uses the 'ecological footprint' methodology to consider the number of people the planet can (a) feed, (b) supply with fresh water, (c) supply with energy, (d) support without reducing biodiversity.

His answers, of course, depend upon the consumption levels which are assumed for the population, but in almost all cases, these answers are less than the planet's present six billion people. How can this be?

There are two reasons. First because of 'ecological deficit budgeting' or, in the catchy phrase of Tim Flannery, because Homo sapiens is a 'future eater'. (See Flannery's two books The Future Eaters, and The Eternal Frontier - check my review of the latter here at amazon.com.)

Secondly because of the time lags which accompany environmental change. McMichael brings this home with the fact that, if we can halt the build-up of greenhouse gases by 2070, the world's oceans will continue to warm and expand for another thousand years! One of the key questions for our time is: Can our opinion leaders and decision makers give such unfamiliar time frames their due weight?

As a member of the International Panel on Climate Change, McMichael also has a useful presentation, explanation and discussion on global climate change. The recent fires in the US, freezing and floods in Europe and climatic records (extremes) have brought home to ordinary people, non-scientists, that something unusual is happening. This book explains why, explains how and looks into the future for the effects of climate change on human health. McMichael concludes that "It will be reasonable from here on to regard each extreme weather event as containing at least some human-induced component".

The book addresses the issue of globalization. The author paints a picture of deregulation reducing labour and environmental controls and increasing disease and social disruption in both the West and in low-income countries.

What of the future? McMichael considers far more than I can squeeze into this review, but an interesting observation concerns the importance of the way in which the tension between two evolutionarily-determined human mental attributes is played out. Humans have a long standing expertise at dealing with urgent crises, 'flight-or-fight'. But this tendency has got us to our present environmental predicament. The question is whether can we use our more recently acquired abilities for long-term planning, sophisticated scientific reasoning and information technology to rescue us from the short-termism of flight-or-fight.

The book uses brilliantly conceived and very telling graphs which are powerful examples of a picture being worth a thousand words. Each repays careful study.

Each chapter ends with a useful 2-3 page summary and conclusion. There are 36 pages of annotated bibliography, many references from 2000, even 2001.

If you'd like a taste for the fast pace of the book and the author's scientific approach, I recommend his account of Lyme disease on page 117.

Ecology - human, animal, vegetable and planetary.......2001-07-29

This is a tour de force, a brilliant, densely packed account of human evolutionary biology and ecology, setting the progress of the human race and its civilizations and cultures in the context of shifting environmental, climatic, social, cultural and ecological forces over the lifetime of our species. Tony McMichael describes and explains how we have reached the present human situation, the interplay of our species with the plants and animals that supply our food, and the microbes that often shorten our lives. In the short period since the industrial revolution we have made spectacular progress in every way imaginable, but now our own ingenuity and industries may threaten our very survivsl - we are at risk of endangering our life support systems to an extent that could harm them badly enough to raise questions about our own prospects for survival as a species. This is an important book for everyone who cares about life - our lives, and the lives of other species with which we are interdependent.

Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge

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Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge
Linda Nash
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520248872

Book Description

Among the most far-reaching effects of the modern environmental movement was the widespread acknowledgment that human beings were inescapably part of a larger ecosystem. With this book, Linda Nash gives us a wholly original and much longer history of "ecological" ideas of the body as that history unfolded in California's Central Valley. Taking us from nineteenth-century fears of miasmas and faith in wilderness cures to the recent era of chemical pollution and cancer clusters, Nash charts how Americans have connected their diseases to race and place as well as dirt and germs. In this account, the rise of germ theory and the pushing aside of an earlier environmental approach to illness constituted not a clear triumph of modern biomedicine but rather a brief period of modern amnesia. As Nash shows us, place-based accounts of illness re-emerged in the postwar decades, galvanizing environmental protest against smog and toxic chemicals. Carefully researched and richly conceptual, Inescapable Ecologies brings critically important insights to the histories of environment, culture, and public health, while offering a provocative commentary on the human relationship to the larger world.

Ecosystem Change And Public Health: A Global Perspective

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The world is changing, but are public health practitioners?

Ecosystem Change And Public Health: A Global Perspective
Joan L. Aron
Manufacturer: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801865824

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"The purpose of this textbook on global ecosystem change and human health is twofold:(1) to raise awareness of changes in human health related to global ecosystem change and (2) to expand the scope of the traditional curriculum in environmental health to include the interactions of major environmental forces and public health on a global scale."--from the Introduction

Ecosystem Change and Public Health focuses on how human health is affected by global ecosystem changes. It is the first textbook devoted to this emerging field, offering a global perspective on research methods and emphasizing empirical investigations of health outcomes in combination with integrated assessment for policy development. The book covers such topics as global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, water resources management, and ecology and infectious disease. Case studies of cholera, malaria, the effects of water resources, and global climate change and air pollution illustrate the analysis and methodology. The book also includes a resource center describing places to start searches on the World Wide Web, guidelines for finding and evaluating information, suggested study projects, and strategies for encouraging communication among course participants.

Customer Reviews:

The world is changing, but are public health practitioners?.......2007-10-02

The winds of global environmental change are blowing upon my profession. But are environmental health specialists smelling the foul air that is the future? Or, are they too busy reviewing hot dog stands and commercial dishwasher models, selling cookbooks at their association meetings, approving sprawl-inducing septic systems, and failing to make the connection between global ecological changes and the predicted impacts on their local public health jurisdictions? Is public health practice in the U.S. doomed by its under-funded focus on cig smoke and health, the uninsured, and heart-stopping fat consumption?

While this book will probably be read by mostly PH grad students, the old timers doing time in state and local environmental health depts should take a close look, especiallly chapters on info sources and GIS. For those involved in international env health work, this book is an excellent starting point for a reintroduction to the environment in environmental health work. To its credit, Calif has begun the analysis of climate impacts on water resources, vectors, the epidemiology of mortality from elevated temps, etc. But much more is needed and this book serves as the groundwork for those in the profession who have made that important connection between (failing)ecosystems and the public health of a human population. Following the book, I can see the need in CA for a statewide dialogue on demographics, migration, and local public health.

The only missing topic (due to the pub date) in this release is the environmental health impacts of war, though the chapter on cholera, which is returning with a vengence in war-torn Iraq, is highly relevant.

THAT topic may require a separate book by the time the U.S. has fully ravaged that country, but Seidel introduces this topic in Environmental Health: From Global to Local (2005), edited by Frumkin.

Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology (Linking Levels of Analysis)

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Important and Useful
thomas leatherman is super smart ! ! !

Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology (Linking Levels of Analysis)

Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0472066064

Book Description

Anthropology, with its dual emphasis on biology and culture, is--or should be--the discipline most suited to the study of the complex interactions between these aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, since the early decades of this century, biological and cultural anthropology have grown distinct, and a holistic vision of anthropology has suffered.

This book brings culture and biology back together in new and refreshing ways. Directly addressing earlier criticisms of biological anthropology, Building a New Biocultural Synthesis concerns how culture and political economy affect human biology--e.g., people's nutritional status, the spread of disease, exposure to pollution--and how biological consequences might then have further effects on cultural, social, and economic systems.

Contributors to the volume offer case studies on health, nutrition, and violence among prehistoric and historical peoples in the Americas; theoretical chapters on nonracial approaches to human variation and the development of critical, humanistic and political ecological approaches in biocultural anthropology; and explorations of biological conditions in contemporary societies in relationship to global changes.

Building a New Biocultural Synthesis will sharpen and enrich the relevance of anthropology for understanding a wide variety of struggles to cope with and combat persistent human suffering. It should appeal to all anthropologists and be of interest to sister disciplines such as nutrition and sociology.

Alan H. Goodman is Professor of Anthropology, Hampshire College. Thomas L. Leatherman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina.

Customer Reviews:

Important and Useful.......2004-11-11

This is an attempt by biological anthropologists to bridge what they see as the ever increasing gap between cultural/symbolic/postmodern approaches to anthropology and biological/medical/scientific approaches. This divide is apparently destroying many departments and is moving both of the two approaches away from what makes anthropology distinctive as a field (its comprehensivity). The merging of theories is great for an early (and I hear solitary) attempt at this and the case studies are fascinating and maybe not quite as brilliant as the earlier post would have it. Still, this is a must read for people who are concerned with where anthropology is going.

thomas leatherman is super smart ! ! !.......2004-02-04

I am completely enthralled by the wonderful world of Political-Economic perspectives on the human body. Just think about how horrible it would be if the right wing masses started opening McDonlalds in 3rd world countries throughout the world. The horror ! ! !

Tom Leatherman is a genius......His psychic abilities are amazing. He is so damn smart, he can actually read poeples minds. His life has been dedicated to these studies, and just think where mankind would be if we could'nt identify the "barrirers" to prenatel care among the poor suffering minorities of South Carolina. What would we do if he had not studied the dietary changes of the Mayan poeple.

I say hooray to this book and hooray to all of the life changing work professor leathermen is working on.

Book Description

'Complete freedom from disease and from struggle is almost incompatible with the process of living, ' Rene Dubos asserted in this classic essay on ecology and health. All the accomplishments of science and technology, he argued, will not bring the utopian dream of universal well-being, because they ignore the dynamic process of adaptation to a constantly changing environment that every living organism must face.

Customer Reviews:

Mind changer by a great author.......2001-04-24

Rene Dubos, a doc, was one of the first and most influential environmentalists and also bent medicine. This book established that disease is PART of health---not in some goopy self-awareness way but as an inherent part of a system remaining able to correct itself and restore dynamic homeostasis.

Book Description

Using an easy-to-follow, case-study format, this text offers proven programs that can help reduce workers' compensation costs, lower absenteeism, and boost morale and productivity. By providing practical information on nutrition, stress management, weight loss, smoking cessation, and substance abuse programs, it puts forth an aggressive management model that shows the reader how to head off potential risky behavior, subsequent health problems, and high insurance claims in the workplace.

Geographical And Environmental Epidemiology: METHODS FOR SMALL-AREA STUDIES (Oxford Medical Publications)

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Geographical And Environmental Epidemiology: METHODS FOR SMALL-AREA STUDIES (Oxford Medical Publications)
ELLIOTT
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192622358

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Now available in paperback, this book is the first to address both the theoretical and practical issues which arise when describing the geographical distribution of disease and investigating apparent disease clusters. Requirements in terms of population data, disease incidence, and mortality are considered and related to the scale at which a study is being carried out. Statistical methods are reviewed for large scale correlation studies, intermediate scale map smoothing exercises, and small scale clustering investigations. Problems of measuring environmental exposures at different scales are also reviewed. These issues are then related to current practice via comprehensive set of case studies which include a large correlation study in China, clustering of asthma attacks, the Sellafield-leukaemia cluster, environmental clusters of mesothelioma in Turkey, and a multi-source study if cancer incidence around an incinerator.

Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them

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An enthralling read about modern diseases!
A chilling introduction to human / microbe interaction in the modern world
A compelling read
A good, quick introduction to a very important field
Skip this one if you are looking to learn something

Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them
Mark Jerome Walters
Manufacturer: Island Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 155963992X

Book Description

"In a clear, engaging style, Dr. Walters tells the tale of each disease like a detective story. He allows each mystery to unfold as it did in reality, often slowly, through the lives of the plants and animals involved, the first human victims, the government officials who tried to respond, and the scientists who ultimately explained what was happening." -NEW YORK TIMES

"...a fascinating work of ecological journalism, utterly convincing in its argument: that our health and the health of the environment are intimately linked, and we overlook that link at our peril." -MICHAEL POLLAN, AUTHOR OF SECOND NATURE AND THE BOTANY OF DESIRE

"Mark Jerome Walters weaves a fine thread of human disturbances through the quilt work of modern pandemics. After being drawn engagingly into the explosive symptoms of global environmental change, readers will come to understand that we have no choice but to make peace with nature." -PAUL R. EPSTEIN, M.D., M.P.H., CENTER FOR HEALTH AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

West Nile Virus -- Mad Cow Disease -- HIV/AIDS -- Hantavirus -- Lyme Disease ... and a new strain of Salmonella. Such modern epidemics have emerged over the past few decades as mysterious, yet significant risks to human health. These "plagues" are forcing us to modify our lifestyles in ways that minimize our chances of becoming a statistic in the latest tally of the afflicted.

In Six Modern Plagues, Mark Jerome Walters offers us the first book for the general reader that connects these emerging health risks and their ecological origins. Drawing on new research, interviews, and his own investigations, Mark Jerome Walters weaves together a compelling argument: that changes humans have made to the environment, from warming the climate to clearing the forests, have contributed to, if not caused a rising tide of diseases that are afflicting humans and many other species.

According to Mark Jerome Walters, humans are not always innocent bystanders to infectious disease. To the contrary, in the case of many modern epidemics, we are the instigators. Six Modern Plagues, a ground-breaking introduction to the connection between disease and environmental degradation should be read by all those interested in their health and the health of others.

Customer Reviews:

An enthralling read about modern diseases!.......2007-01-12

A valuable resource on environmental issues and modern diseases, Mark Jerome Walters' Six Modern Plagues is an overall enthralling read. The author is very qualified on the material of this book and even has time to incorporate a story line about the victims of the diseases making this book hard to put down. It is a fairly easy read and should be interesting for anyone who would like to learn about the environment. It also has much important information for someone studying biology, microbiology and any other in the field of biological or medical sciences.

The Six plagues written in this book are Mad Cow disease, HIV/AIDS, Salmonella DT104, Lyme disease, Hantavirus, and St.Louis Encephalitis. There is a clear connection shown in this book between the rapid spread of the diseases noted and changes in the environment caused by humans. The system of events for the victims was engaging and descriptive. The current situation is also noted at the end of each chapter so that older diseases can be looked upon to prevent future occurrences. Overall the book does contain some faults. It offers little hope for the future which makes it almost depressing to read. Also at times when describing the victim he includes too much medical data which might make it hard to follow for someone with no medical experience. The few faults that this book does have it makes up for making this an altogether great book that I recommend to anyone.

A chilling introduction to human / microbe interaction in the modern world.......2006-07-07

I was required to read this as part of my Intro to Microbiology course. I kept it on my bookshelf because it quickly became an invaluable resource. While it is obvious the author knows a lot about the subject material, the book itself is fairly easy to read, and has almost the elements of a page-turner at times.

The best thing about this book is that it very clearly shows the causative relationship between human change to the environment and the diseases that are currently afflicting us, including Mad Cow and Lyme disease. Even now, three semesters after the class, I still find myself bringing up this book in conversations and using it as a reference for discussions about the evolution of microbes and antibiotic resistant superbugs.

If you have any interest in microbiology... if you are going into the medical field or any of the biological sciences... or if you are simply concerned about the effect that humans are having on the world at large, I highly recommend this book.

A compelling read.......2005-08-12

I was turned on to the book by Mark's older brother, John Walters, who is executive director of the Lightstone Foundation, an environmental organization based in West Virginia. I was expecting a deary medical discourse for the mass consumer culture. What I got was a compelling read about critical problems facing and caused by our society.

Mark's writing style is very engaging and I had the pleasure of reading it straight through. The thoughts evoked are not terrifying or hysteric but rather give one the basis to weave the subject matter into our everyday decisions on how to live in an ever more complex and mobile world.

A good, quick introduction to a very important field.......2004-09-21

This year it's the West Nile virus that's killing birds, horses and people for the first time where I live in Northern California. In the past year we've read about SARS appearing in China and jumping to cities around the world, about Mad Cow disease showing up here in the U.S., in Canada and in Japan, about the threat of a global flu epidemic, and of course we're all aware of the vast AIDS epidemic which continues to penetrate new populations in the industrialized world and which is devastating much of Africa.

Veterinarian Mark Walters does a very readable job of discerning a common thread that ties together these and other modern plaques. He demonstrates that they are not simply random natural events, but are all intimately tied to human activities. The strange infectious proteins that cause Mad Cow disease would not have created an epidemic if farmers hadn't gotten used to feeding cattle the ground-up by-products of other cows. HIV almost certainly spread from a primate reservoir to humans through the butchering and ingestion of bush meat, a growing practice that could easily be the source of future plagues. The deadly bacteria that are becoming increasing resistant to our armamentarium of antibiotics are goaded along this path by the use of enormous quantities of antibiotics in raising animals. Walters traces similar human factors for Lyme Disease, Hantavirus and the West Nile virus.

Readers who are interested in the plagues that have shaped human history, or in emerging diseases that have the potential to decimate the world today or in the near future will need to go beyond Walters' brief book. Still, I found it a helpful reminder of the extent to which we humans are influencing the course of events, even seemingly natural events like the outbreaks of new diseases. The more aware we are of the impacts of our activities, the more likely we are to be willing to modify them.

Robert Adler, author of Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome; and Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation.

Skip this one if you are looking to learn something.......2004-05-13

This book is disappointing. Walters offers little scientific or intellectual insight, or constructive advice for addressing some genuine human concerns. If you want to learn something about disease incidence and history, skip this book and buy Andrew Speilman's Mosquito, which is excellent!

Emergence of new diseases and the reemergence of old ones is indeed a real concern, but Walters's politically correct philosophy prevents him from offering any real useful advice. Instead, the book amounts to little more than a well-written rant about the horrors of modern society and technology. Walters's view is basically that mankind's disruption of nature is causing "ecodemics"-disease outbreaks caused mankind's tampering with nature by doing such things as building homes (or sprawl as he calls it), entering the forests, and world travel.

It is true that human actions do spread disease. But that is hardly a revelation since many diseases spread by human contact or by traveling vectors like mosquitoes. World travel throughout the ages has spread diseases across continents and Western nations are now seeing the emergence of new diseases and the reemergence of old ones. Clearly, we do have a need for disease-control efforts, and we should learn from the past, which Walters might say is his point. But that's not where his argument leads.

Walters says we must address these causes by "protecting and restoring ecological wholeness upon which our health depends." The implication is that there should be fewer people, living in smaller, more isolated communities. But Walters's cure is more imaginary than achievable. How are we going to drastically reduce population and return to isolationist societies? It just isn't going to happen, and it wouldn't be a good thing. Thanks to globalization, economic growth, and human ingenuity, the average lifespan is now longer than anytime in history. With economic growth, we have been able to make remarkable progress in the battle against disease. Aggressive human action has removed smallpox from the menu of diseases in the transmission cycle (only an act of terrorism could bring it back). Determined efforts, rather than passive responses (which Walters recommends), have made the last decade less disease-ridden.

That is not to say the challenges don't continue. In addition to emerging infections in the Western world, people in developing nations suffer from diseases on a catastrophic scale. Consider the simple fact that people living in huts lack things that most people have in those "sprawling" neighborhoods that Walters dubs "shortsighted efforts to make the world more hospitable for humans." They lack, for instance, barriers to mosquito entry such as screened windows-leaving them exposed to malaria-carrying insects that produce several hundred million illnesses and several million deaths every year. Most of malaria's victims are children. The spraying of DDT on the walls of these homes-one of the most affordable options for the poor-could act as an alternative barrier to mosquitoes. But Walters never offers such advice or even bothers to acknowledge the millions who die owing to primitive living conditions.

Walters's presentation of the "facts" about many of the diseases should also be read with a critical eye as he often doesn't tell the whole story. For example, consider his chapter on antibiotic use in animals, which he suggests is creating antibiotic resistant organisms in our food that pose serious risks. He basically says that farmers give these medications to farm animals because they are lazy and just want to make "extra money." While there is some risk of resistant microbes developing, the impact is far more limited that Walters suggests, and risk can be managed. Most resistance problems result from the use of antibiotics in hospitals. Walters doesn't note that fact or offer useful advice about how to address the problem. For example, proper cooking of meat can greatly reduce risks, but he doesn't recommend that. Nor does he note the benefits of antibiotics-which reduce other risks and make this agricultural practice a net benefit to society. Agricultural antibiotic use means that animals are healthier can be raised on less feed. As a result, less land is planted to feed animals, reducing farm related runoff problems and making more land available for wildlife. Lower production costs and higher production means that more people can eat at a lower cost. And reduced feed intake means reduced animal waste, which reduces the environmental impacts of such waste. Antibiotics produce healthier animals, which translates into healthier meat for human consumption.

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Should be a required med school textbook!

Microbial Inhabitants of Humans: Their Ecology and Role in Health and Disease
Michael Wilson
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521841585

Book Description

Microbial communities (normal indigenous microbiota) inhabit those regions of the human body that are exposed to the external environment, including the skin, eyes, oral cavity and the respiratory, urinary, reproductive and gastrointestinal tracts. Consequently, the key anatomical and physiological characteristics of each body site are described throughout this book to reveal why particular organisms are able to colonize an anatomical region. The crucial roles of the indigenous microbiota in protecting against exogenous pathogens, regulating the development of our immune system and mucosae, and providing nutrients are also discussed.

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Should be a required med school textbook!.......2006-07-08

This very thorough textbook is an enlightening visitation of an ignored organ. The trillions of microbes inhabiting our bodies certainly impact our state of health. Those desiring to help others or themselves should purchase and read this textbook. I'm glad I read it, its help me to better understand how health is affected by our parasitic partners.

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