Further, the relative importance of sanitation, health education, and nutrition--in contrast to medical interventions like immunization and antibiotics--has remained in contentious debate. Regardless, this achievement is trumpeted as the conquest of infectious disease--a glorious tribute, indeed, to public health and medical science.
In consequence, health research since 1950 has ever more emphasized chronic constitutional afflictions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and psychiatric disorders to the relative neglect of infection. Environmental anxieties are focused on radiation and chemical toxins rather than arthropod vectors and airborne contagion.
Our complacency over the triumph of the human over the microbial has been shaken by the global HIV pandemic. In truth, the majority of the world's population has never been relieved of its load of malaria, tuberculosis, diarrheal disease, and a host of parasitoses. It has taken AIDS to provoke a new look at the threats to human health in the U.S. from infections recently thought ...
