Anna Kitchens Forum 2

Anna Kitchens Forum 2

by Deleted user -
Number of replies: 3

My favorite chapter so far has been chapter 3, thirteen gorillas. Learning about Ebola was very fascinating to me. The fact that ebola has a 60-75% fatality rate is jaw dropping. Also the fact that it appears and kills so many people and then disappears again for periods of time before reemerging is a very interesting trait it has. I also enjoyed seeing how different cultures played into how people dealt with the diseases. In Uganda, the people believed that ebola was some sort of sorcery. I also enjoyed reading about Kelly Warfields story about how she was infected with ebola while experimenting on mice. Reading about all the precautions that were taken once she stuck herself with a needle that had been put into rats with ebola, made clear the awareness and medical advantages we have here in the US compared to the countries in Africa that were being affected by ebola. In Africa, people were kissing and hugging the corpses of family and friends that passed away from ebola. Meanwhile in the US, Warfield was isolated in a room that had a series of doors you had to go through to get in and you were only allowed in to visit wearing a whole suit to protect you, along with many other precautions that had to be taken. The difference in the way that ebola patients are treated in the US vs in Africa is something that really interested me in this chapter.


I think the topic that has had the biggest impact on me is the idea that most of our modern disease epidemics are occurring as a result of human encroachment on the natural ecological boundaries of the animal kingdom. The fact that we can be the cause of these epidemics is eye opening. It made me realize that if we were in the animals shoes, we wouldn't want people always intruding our spaces. This topic has made me realize that I need to be more aware of the boundaries of different habitats and be careful when I am entering the habitat of animals because we are just guests, it is not our home. It makes me wonder if we made people more aware about this idea and people were more cautious about avoiding certain ecological boundaries, if we would see a decrease in modern disease epidemics. The only problem is our population is growing. As Johanna Lindahl and Delia Grace write, “The human population is growing, requiring more space for food production, and needing more animals to feed it” (Lindahl and Grace).  With the population growing we must still be careful with whose territory we are entering as we find more spaces to live and grow food. This idea does cause me to see the world differently because it is often easy to forget that this world isn’t just ours. It reminded me that it is also the animal’s so we must share and be aware of that.


Lindahl, Johanna F, and Delia Grace. “The Consequences of Human Actions on Risks for Infectious Diseases: a Review.” Infection Ecology & Epidemiology, Co-Action Publishing, 27 Nov. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4663196/.

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Re: Anna Kitchens Forum 2

by Deleted user -
Anna,
I would have to agree the chapter 13 gorillas was very interesting! To hear that the disease can kill so many in a short amount of time is something I had not really thought about. My interest sparked about Ebola when we talked about the student from Union College in Kentucky potentially having an infectious disease. To think about a potential outbreak here in the US is unimaginable. Even when Dr. Kent and his nurse came back to the CDC in Atlanta, in an extremely contained environment, people began to fret about it being so close to us. I keep going back to the selfless act where he chose to split the medicine with the nurse, this was very admirable. I wonder what the next steps are to create more of this medicine since we saw there was a limited amount.

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Re: Anna Kitchens Forum 2

by Deleted user -
Anna, just like you, I found the chapter Thirteen Gorillas rather intriguing. For me, this was the one disease that I can recall when the outbreak came out and the scare. I never thought that diseases came intact with the world due to our (human) actions and disturbance. Similar to you, I never thought about how much disruption humans cause while traveling and working. I wonder if people were to educate others about how many diseases could have been prevented. But a downsized is that third world countries depend on crops and forestry to provide for their families and wellbeing. Even though we could educate people on the importance of keeping an ecological balance, it is some people’s way life. I agreed when you stated how “With the population growing, we must still be careful with whose territory we are entering as we find more spaces to live and grow food.” With the population exponentially increasing yearly, we need to become more aware and start new practices to save the world from humans but also save humans from the world. As we deteriorate the world, an increase of disease we have never encounter will arise, and more people would be infected due to the population density of the world.

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Re: Anna Kitchens Forum 2

by Deleted user -
Hey Anna! I also enjoyed reading the chapter Thirteen Gorillas. I found it scary that while Kelly Warfield was experimenting with the mice, her life was completely changed in an instant. This is terrifying because people do this every day for a living. So many people do stuff like this for a living. They experiment and test different infectious diseases in different animals eventually finding new cures or new information about the diseases being worked with. Without these people, we would not have the cures for diseases like we do today. 
I also find it very interesting that we are the cause of a lot of these epidemics. I never thought that us encroaching on animals' territory is the reason why a lot of these diseases are out and among us. The New York Times states that "Diseases have always come out of the woods and wildlife and found their way into human populations — the plague and malaria are two examples. But emerging diseases have quadrupled in the last half-century, experts say, largely because of increasing human encroachment into habitats, especially in disease “hot spots” around the globe, mostly in tropical regions" (New York Times). Two major infectious diseases that impacted our world (Malaria and Plague) were all caused because of us disrupting animals' habitats. If we had not disrupted the animals' habitats, these infectious diseases might never have been released. Overall, both of these ideas have changed the way I will think. 

Robbins, Jim. “The Ecology of Disease.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 July 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html.


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