Terrific article I have kept the link to called
1491, from the Atlantic March 2002. Have actually suggested on this list
before.
Treesa Rogerson, M.A.
Lands Alive : Ecology By Design
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:47
PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] MHC and
PC
In a message dated 3/19/2003 10:32:52 AM Eastern Standard
Time, rmhoward@omninet.net.au
writes:
Measles flourishes in conditions of extreme poverty like refugee
camps or following wars. It is one of the diseases that people are expecting
to crop up in the expected refigees in Iraq. In 1891 the small newly
established town of Broomehill in Western Australia had it's first show
Agricultural Show - a great success for the otherwise remote commuinty on
the eastern edge of the high rainfall area of the south west. An unfortunate
consequence was the ferocity f the inffluenza epidemic that killed several
people in the white community (none of whom had been in the area for more
than thirty years). The effect of influenza on the black community was not
noticed.
Whooping cough spreads explosively through communities
being very infectious when the herd immunity from the previous epidemic is
reduced. These affects have nothing to do with race, ethnicity or any other
distinguishing feature of the people involved. They are function of the
environmental factors such as population density, health, nutrition and
hygeine and the dynamics of herd resistance (that is the percentage of teh
population immune at a particular time. Genetic variability is irrelevant.
Dear Bob--
You're very right-- herd immunity
and individual immunity are central to the spread of infectious disease. As it
is true, however, that mothers can confer an immunity to their infants, would
you know how they can do that if "genetic variability is irrelevant'? Would it
be through the colostrum? How is the immune system primed to identify
pathogens the child will encounter once born, if not through some sort of
genetic mechanism? I'm asking because I don't know.
Today's world is so
well mixed that I think it would be very hard to find a virgin population with
no immunity to the usual worldwide diseases, like the flu. In 1891 this would
have been much less so. Most influenzas are incubated in the pig and
duck-tending populations of southeast Asia, so it may have been that the
Australians had periodically been exposed to the flu where the Anglo colonists
may not have been at the time. That's just a speculation.
But what I've
seen for a fact is that back in the 1960's when Americans showed up in odd
parts of rural Mexico and Latin America, the more isolated Indian populations
would die like flies if you brought a cold in with you-- they had never been
exposed before. This was a hazard one had to be very aware of when travelling
off the path. Not only out of concern for their health-- if you caused the
deaths of a number of children and old folks in an isolated area, your own
health was highly at risk.
I'm proposing a truce. My observation
originally was not that white men have superior genes and thus shed disease
more easily-- it was that people from the Eurasian continent colonized the
rest of the world, and brought the diseases to which they had some degree of
immunity with them. These diseases killed a lot of people before the New World
populations also achieved equilibrium with them-- some as late as the 1960's,
some perhaps still today. These Europeans-- coincidentally white people--
carried weed seeds unwittingly, in the holds of their ships and the seams of
their boots. So in time, the American field and roadside came to look much
like that of England. Newfoundland, for instance, never had many wildflowers
before the Irish showed up, because it didn't have bees. Now it's quite
colorful in the spring, although the bees still don't look entirely
comfortable there.
The striking fact is that weeds have hardly ever
gone in the other direction. American volunteer species taking hold on the
European continent are quite rare, and hardly ever spread aggressively enough
to be a nuisance. I wonder why.
Peace, Brother.....
Mike Elvin
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