Nobel Prize winner Dr. Joshua Lederberg warned an audience of colleagues, professors, and students about the potential for epidemic outbreaks, even in a modern, scientifically-advanced society during his speech at Tufts on Wednesday.
Approximately 140 people filled Cabot Auditorium to hear Lederberg's presentation on the nature of infectious diseases. He discussed 19th century epidemics, such as smallpox, and how the eradication of such diseases has allowed for the rapid rise in life expectancy of Americans, from about 47 in 1900 to 77 in 2000.
But Lederberg cautioned that our society should not stop worrying about diseases, even strains that seem to have been wiped out. "How do we know for sure that smallpox is gone?" he asked.
Numerous reports of deadly outbreaks that have plagued the world this century - including the Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever in Uganda, the Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in parts of Africa, and the Enterovirus, a form of polio, in Taiwan - were discussed on during a slide presentation.
But Lederberg said that none of the outbreaks came close to the scale of past epidemics. Most present-day viruses, he explained, have not killed more than a few hundred people.
"Microbes have some shared interest in the domestication, hence the survival of their hosts," Lederberg said, explaining the reduction in disease-related deaths. If microbes kill their host, he explained, they kill themselves as well. The diseases most likely to survive are those that can infect a host without killing it - thereby spreading the disease.
Lederberg said that concerted global and domestic surveillance and diagnosis of disease outbreaks are needed to prevent future outbreaks. Laboratories, he added, should be installed in areas and centers lacking them, and more money should be poured into public health education.
In terms of disease research, Lederberg said the focus should be shifted away from hypervirulence and turned to the study of how host immunity is exploited and chronic infection sustained.
According to Global Development and Environment Institute Co-Director William R Moomaw, who teaches an international environmental policy class at the Fletcher School of Law of Diplomacy, Lederberg had an accurate grasp of the international dimensions of disease.
"Globalization is a hot topic nowadays, and globalization of disease gives us something to think about," Moomaw said. "From an educational point of view, we all get locked into our own departments and ways of thinking, and this event serves as a reminder that disciplines often converge, especially on an issue such as the future of infectious diseases."
Students seemed to find the lecture informative. "I found it interesting to examine disease from an ecological perspective and to see the world through the eyes of microbes," said Salo Coslovsky, a student at Fletcher.
Lederberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1958 for his research on genetic structure and function in microorganisms, has been involved in an array of scientific pursuits. He worked with NASA in the search for intelligent life on Mars and served on the World Health Organization Advisory Health Research Council.
Lederberg was a government consultant for health-related matters, work for which he received the US National Medal of Science in 1989. Tufts Medical School presented him with an honorary MD degree.
The 2001 Maurice S. Segal Lecture was sponsored by Tufts' medical and Fletcher schools in conjunction with the Global Development And Environment Institute.
