Disease selection : the way disease changed the world / Roger Webber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Webber, Roger, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communicable diseases--History.

Communicable diseases.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 177 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxfordshire, England ; Boston, Massachusetts : CABI, [2015]

Summary:

"Diseases have had more influence on us than we realize. They have taken a major role in making us humans and probably determine the way we run our lives. They emerged with us from our ancestral home in Africa, to spread to the rest of the planet. History is full of the great epidemics of plague, smallpox and anthrax, with the present catastrophe of HIV that is changing the demography of the world in a similar way to its predecessors. We survived because of our genetic variation and immune system and it will be this that will save us again. So fundamental has been the part that disease has played in the world that it has brought about change, just as much as has natural selection. Actually disease has been another force, sometimes acting with natural selection but often in opposition. It continues to have a far more profound effect on all of us than realized, selecting the course of the world just as much as nature has"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The sexual revolution

Out of Africa

Host/parasite interaction

Using a vector

The great plagues

Missionaries of death

The slave trade in parasites

Eden's garden of South America

A glass of water

The great war

Man's best friend?

The animal connection

Not clean

Too clean

The food we eat

Cancer

Climate change and population movements

Disappeared and emergent diseases

The future.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from pdf title page (EBSCO, viewed August 24, 2020).

ISBN:

9781780646855

1780646852