[ED. NOTE: In January 2009, I sat down in Los Angeles with virologist Nathan Wolfe for a wide-ranging discussion on his studies concerning the biology of viral emergence. Within a few months, the world was in a panic about the H1N1 swine flu epidemic that lasted most of 2009. Several months later in "How to Prevent a Pandemic," he wrote:
"The swine flu outbreak seems to have emerged without warning. Within a few days of being noticed, the flu had already spread to the point where containment was not possible. Yet the virus behind it had to have existed for some time before it was discovered. Couldn’t we have detected it and acted sooner, before it spread so widely? The answer is likely yes—if we had been paying closer attention to the human-animal interactions that enable new viruses to emerge.
"While much remains unknown about how pandemics are born, we are familiar with the kinds of microbes—like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), influenza and HIV—that present a risk of widespread disease. We know that they usually emerge from animals and most often in specific locations around the world, places like the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia.
"By monitoring people who are exposed to animals in such viral hotspots, we can capture viruses at the very moment they enter human populations, and thus develop the ability to predict and perhaps even prevent pandemics."
Unfortunately, that eleven-year-old conversation, reprised below, is evermore relevant today. —JB]
NATHAN WOLFE is the Lorry Lokey Visiting Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University and directs the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. His research combines methods from molecular virology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to study the biology of viral emergence.
WAITING FOR "THE FINAL PLAGUE"
In a general sense what I'm interested in is very much a biological universe parallel to our own, which is the universe comprised of microorganisms. Of particular interest to me are viruses, but also bacteria—fascinating organisms—and a range of parasites.
These exist in the same moment in history that we exist, in the same space that we occupy, but inhabit a very different world. Yet, they respond to many of the exact same pressures we do, but in a much shorter time span. Of course, they are subject to natural selection. They are incredibly important to our planet, to us as a species, and the reality is that we understand very little about them. We are actually in a very interesting space with respect to the technologies that we have now, and these are some of the things that have come about through molecular biology.
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