SARS-Like Pandemics Will Continue To Haunt

by Franz Schurmann

Some experts speculate that SARS might have come from animals like the civet cat. Many other epidemics have had their roots in animals as well. But the problem is less the animal and more our prosperity. Prosperity attracts not only human migrants but animal ones as well. The former are attracted by paychecks and the latter by overflowing garbage pails. History has a lot to say about similar periods of prosperity, and the sudden appearance of pandemics that killed thousands, even millions of people.

One country, China, remains the focal point of SARS. China has a long history of prosperity and pandemics. And now, as in the past, it is marked by a huge immigration by both humans and animals into the prosperous cities. And the Chinese remember that their history has had many periods of peace and prosperity followed by death and penury.

In 1997, several people died from "bird flu" in Hong Kong. Now, many Chinese believe that SARS comes from bird crests. When Gro Harlem Brundtland, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), raised the alarm about SARS, she was worried about a new "Black Plague." That 14th century pandemic originated in China as well, but rapidly spread all over Eurasia. Its carriers were rats embedded in ships of the Silk Route crossing the Indian Ocean and in the baggage of merchant convoys of its overland counterpart crossing Central Asia.

According to UN data, half of the world's six billion people live in cities with the percentage rising relentlessly. Urbanization in the industrially advanced countries of North America, Europe and East Asia is already way beyond the 50 percent mark. China is fast catching up. What the data does not mention is that a huge migration of all kinds of animals into the cities is also occurring at the same time.

The bird flu and SARS both originated in one of China's most prosperous urbanized regions, Guangdong and Hong Kong. But the problem is not just in China. New York city is battling a rapidly growing rat population that greatly worries public health officials. Urban cockroaches that cause tuberculosis, a top WHO concern, are everywhere. Migrating birds are showing up in cities where they never used to. In Monterey, California, hundreds of seals recently crowded up a slippery gangplank. Feral cats and dogs hang out in public parks rooting through the garbage. In Marin County's beautiful Point Reyes, some people recently saw a black bear gorging itself at the trash bin. Black bears are not supposed to be in Point Reyes.

But SARS has also raised the general question about urban animals being the source of serious illnesses. Influenza manuals note that all known influenza virus subtypes have been found in migrating birds and waterfowl. They also note that certain varieties of influenza affect humans only if transmitted by another animal, such as pigs. Doctors in Hong Kong believe that the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1919 was transmitted by bird-to-human contact.

Though animals and the fleas they carry might be the direct cause of the great pandemics, the rapid spread of the diseases worldwide cannot be blamed on animals. The spread of the Black Plague that started in China in 1339 and raged during the following decade was made possible by a political condition that had never before been seen in Eurasia.

A single political group, the Mongol conquerors, governed just about every land in Asia from Beijing in the east to Tabriz in the west. They created the first truly global trading system in the eastern hemisphere with roads, inns, and trading posts. Messages between Beijing and Tabriz could be delivered within several weeks. Marco Polo and many other European merchants, missionaries and mercenaries traveled these routes.

But in 1339, the horror of the plague erupted. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands people of all ethnicities and economic classes died. People throughout Asia and Europe believed the world was coming to an end. In 1368, the Buddhist priest Zhu Yuanzhang launched a new Chinese dynasty. One of his first acts was to close down both Silk Routes. Zhu, like many other Chinese, believed that only great evil came from foreign lands and peoples.

What world leaders, including the Chinese leaders, don't understand is that their notion of prosperity brought about by money, technology and weaponry ignores the huge but hidden costs like migration of animals into the cities with its overflowing garbage pails. Until this is recognized, diseases, epidemics and even pandemics brought about by urbanized animals will remain a mortal threat to humankind.