Abstract
The entire health chain is experiencing a sea of change in attitudes and responsibilities concerning risks of disease due to the cascading and colliding forces of globalization and climate change. The special focus in this issue, emerging diseases and global surveillance, was designed to familiarize the readership with some of the events that are transforming population health on an international scale.
Recent years have seen sweeping transformations occurring on a global landscape, and these are affecting populations of animals, including humans, with new diseases that spread far and wide, as well as with old diseases in new locales. Think SARS. Think bird flu or H1N1. Think melamine. Regular headlines declare how populations, countries, and economies are experiencing cataclysmic health events in a novel, recurring, and frightening way. Yogi Berra was right—the future really ain’t what it used to be.
The first article in the series sets the stage for disease occurrence through expansion of trade, as the “global express” of international commerce continues to grow with the escalating potential to unwittingly spew pathogens in new places. Following naturally, Jonathan Arzt and colleagues chronicle the extensive and increasing movement of agricultural diseases to new regions, which engenders or threatens economic havoc. Then Barrett Slenning articulates the potential disease conundrums associated with global climate change and presents several unsettling scenarios. Jack Rhyan and Terry Spraker outline the very problematic nature of studying emerging diseases in wildlife, defining the nebulous boundary between domestic and free-living animals, as well as the oblivious nature of pathogens when it comes to hosts. Donal O’Toole makes an elegant case for the pivotal role of the diagnostic pathologist in elucidating the nature of brand new diseases. As a fitting example of diagnostic pathologists defining new entities, Cathy Brown and Scott Brown’s discussion of food and pharmaceutical contamination in a global context highlights the case of melamine in dog food and diethylene glycol in pharmaceuticals. And in a final article, Kyoko Shinya and colleagues write about the world’s greatest emerging and reemerging disease: influenza.
Pathologists would be well served by turning their microscopes upside down for at least a few moments, to take stock of global events and evaluate how the massive changes occurring in the larger microcosm may or may not visit their professional lives. This series of articles will hopefully provide illuminating glimpses into emerging global disease events and threats.