EID: Bridging the Gap Between Humans and Wildlife

Sometime in the 1980s, the emerging infectious disease (EID) movement began. The "emerging" label had been used earlier, but a series of high-profile disease outbreaks in the 1980s, combined with perceived funding gaps, began to galvanize the field. A book by Richard Krause of the National Institutes of Health1 formed part of the initial thrust. Published in the same year as the recognition of AIDS, it commented on the alarming phenomenon of antibiotic-resistant microbes. Further threats surfac

Written byPeter Daszak

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Sometime in the 1980s, the emerging infectious disease (EID) movement began. The "emerging" label had been used earlier, but a series of high-profile disease outbreaks in the 1980s, combined with perceived funding gaps, began to galvanize the field. A book by Richard Krause of the National Institutes of Health¹formed part of the initial thrust. Published in the same year as the recognition of AIDS, it commented on the alarming phenomenon of antibiotic-resistant microbes. Further threats surfaced: Legionnaire's disease, toxic shock syndrome, multiple-drug resistance in a host of important pathogens, Lyme disease, and others.

The year 1992 saw the publication of an Institute of Medicine treatise on emerging infections,2 and a special section in Science talked about a "post-antimicrobial era," tuberculosis as a "reemergent killer," and the "crisis in antibiotic resistance." This was rapidly followed by Emerging Viruses3 by Stephen S. Morse of Rockefeller University, and another Science section included ...

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