Pandemics, Epidemics and the Ecology Continued: With Some Long Overdue Acknowledgements

There are new outbreaks of febrile intestinal illness involving many states east of the Rockies. The CDC indicates packaged vegetable produce from areas involved in prior flooding and associated with particular companies. There are issued recalls on the packaged products and stores have been required to remove them from the shelves. Ask at your local stores for recall information, check labels of salad greens, etc., against CDC.com information. West of the Rockies there is a progression of febrile, respiratory illnesses, some of which have unknown vectors, but are linked to fire and flood. Hanta virus and rodents, Dengue type illness and mosquitoes are a familiar pairing.

Once again, CDC reference is needed. By now the discerning have noticed that living or better said biological entities must not only adapt to relentless ecological change, but are noted to employ two principal mechanisms to ensure survival. The first is evolving biodiversity to maximize species survival across many environments. The second is population control either swelling numbers or reducing numbers to ensure species survival. Lemmings to the sea or starving out the second bird nest occupant. The same two solutions are available to bacteria, viruses, and even proteinaceous strands.

I last wrote about anthropoid adaptation and my visits to China in the 80's...I am indebted to the late Professor Charles Wagley of Columbia University for support in taking graduate courses in anthropology as an undergraduate. Prof. Wagley was a cultural anthropologist whose special area of study was the Tapirape Indians of South America. I learned that cultural anthropology disfavored the Caribbean as an area of study and that physical anthropologists disfavored cultural anthropology, despite linguistics being at the time the second most reliable method of tracing origins.

I will also acknowledge the late Polykarp Kush, Nobel prize mechanical science physicist, who persuaded me in a makeup exam that acceleration in the form of directional change is what prevented the moon from flying away from earth. He also persuaded me to use my ability to think on my feet and articulate as life tools despite not knowing much physics. Also, cheers for Dick Waite, Columbia wrestling coach, who overheard me one day speculating about lightweight boxing as a vocation (although not seriously) and who said that education was to be used to further self and others and not to join the ranks of those with the cauliflower ears.

I will also acknowledge Prof A.B. Hollingshead of Yale and Lt. Colonel Smith of the USAF MC. Johnson AFB. All of these men listened and heard with the biases of their times as backdrop but still urged excellence and perseverance without consigning me to a predetermined place in the world. This was in contrast to a Professor at Columbia who I will not name but fittingly whose area of study was rhus toxicondendron (poison ivy).