MAN AND MICROBES: Disease and Plagues in...

MAN AND MICROBES: Disease and Plagues in History of Modern Times by Arno Karlen (Touchstone: $13.; 266 pp.). In this interesting and ominous study, Arno Karlen argues that outbreaks of new and/or more virulent forms of disease have historically been linked to a variety of factors: environmental degradation, shifts in demographics, technological advances, changes in human behavior. The growth of permanent human settlements provided breeding places for microbes and the insects and rodents that spread them. The increasing speed of travel facilitates the transport of disease-bearing organisms, e.g. monkeys infected with deadly Ebola virus. Infectious diseases are clearly not a thing of the past, as people believed earlier in the century: Unchecked population growth, breakdowns in public health systems, ecological damage and the continuing evolution of disease-producing microbes will produce future plagues, which medical science may or may not be able to check.