The Coming Plague (143 page)

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Authors: Laurie Garrett

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54
World Health Organization,
Our Planet
,
Our Health
, WHO Report to the United Nations Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, June 1992.
55
In 1990 another new disease—Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever—emerged. Like Machupo and Junín, it was caused by a virus (dubbed Guanarito virus) that was carried by rodents (
Sigmodan hispidus
rats). The rats came in contact with
Homo sapiens
when large numbers of settlers moved into a previously pristine rain forest area. Guanarito killed 30 percent of the people it infected. See R. Salas, N. D. Manzione, R. B. Tesh, et al., “Venezuelan Hemorrhagic Fever,”
Lancet
338 (1991): 1033–36.
Still another hemorrhagic fever virus killed a twenty-five-year-old office worker in S
o Paulo, Brazil, in 1992. The origin of the Sabia virus, the cause of Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, has yet to be determined. See T. L. M. Coimbra, E. S. Nassar, M. N. Burattini, et al., “New Arenavirus Isolated in Brazil,”
Lancet
343 (1994): 391–92.
56
 
COMMERCIAL AIR TRAFFIC
Source: International Air Transportation Association, 1993.
Year
Millions of Passengers
International
1950
2
1960
42
1970
74
1980
163
1990
280
Domestic, U.S.A.
1950
17
1960
38
1970
153
1980
273
1990
424
57
In addition to human beings, hundreds of millions of animals were shipped from continent to continent annually by 1990. House pets, research animals, Thoroughbred horses, breeding livestock, illegally smuggled endangered species, aquarium fish, and a host of other broad categories of animals were routinely shipped overseas aboard airplanes or ocean liners.
58
S. S. Morse, “Emerging Viruses: Defining the Rules for Viral Traffic,”
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
34 (1991): 387–409; and S. S. Morse, “Origins of Emerging Viruses,” Chapter 2 in Morse, ed. (1993), op. cit.
59
B. Fleckenstein and R. C. Desrosiers,
“Herpesvirus saimiri and Herpesvirus ateles
,” Chapter 6 in B. Roizman, ed.,
The Herpesviruses
, Vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Plenum, 1982); J. C. Albrecht and B. Fleckenstein, “Primary Structure of the
Herpesvirus saimiri
Genome,”
Journal of Virology
66 (1992): 5047–58; and B. Biesinger, “Stable Growth Transformation of Human T Lymphocytes by
Herpesvirus saimiri,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
89 (1992): 3116–19.
60
The virus, wrote researchers from the Institut für Klinische und Molekulare Virologie in Erlangen, Germany, “seems to be particularly prone to sequestering cellular genes. The genome appears to function as a spontaneous vector for cellular genes that may have been acquired by a mechanism involving reverse transcription, since most of the viral counterparts have no introns. The uptake of such genes may provide functions necessary for the progression of biological properties and secure a selection advantage in the natural host.” See Albrecht and Fleckenstein (1992), op. cit.
61
H. Ludwig, “B Virus,” in Roizman, ed. (1982), 1: 417–19; and J. E. Kaplan, “Herpesvirus Simiae (B Virus) Infection in Monkey Handlers,”
Journal of Infectious Diseases
157 (1988): 1090.
62
The Mason-Pfizer virus was found in nineteen French blood donors and in some healthy people in Guinea-Bissau. See V. A. Morozov, F. Saal, A. Gessain, et al., “Antibodies to Gag Gene Coded Polypeptides of Type D Retroviruses in Healthy People from Guinea-Bissau,”
Intervirology
32 (1991): 253–57.
A type D virus similar but not identical to Mason-Pfizer was found in the blood of a Texas AIDS patient. See L. A. Donehower, R. C. Bohannon, R. J. Ford, and R. A. Gibbs, “The Use of Primers from Highly Conserved Pol Regions to Identify Uncharacterized Retroviruses by the Polymerase Chain Reaction,”
Journal of Virological Methods
28 (1990): 33–46.
63
Centers for Disease Control, “Primate Zoonoses Surveillance,” Report II, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, issued September 1973.
64
Periodically the CDC would manage to spot faults in the monkey importation system before significant numbers of human beings were infected. For example, between June 1990 and May 1993 a West African export company made 249 monkey shipments to the United States: 7 percent of the animals arrived in the United States carrying tuberculosis, some of them suffering active cases of disease. See Centers for Disease Control, “Tuberculosis in Imported Nonhuman Primates—United States, June 1990-May 1993,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
42 (1993): 572–75.
65
The data do not include bone marrow transplants. Data derived from F. H. Cate and S. S. Laudicina, “Transplantation White Paper,” Annenberg Washington Program, Northwestern University, 1991.
66
C. R. Hitchcock, J. C. Kiser, R. L. Telander, et al., “Baboon Renal Grafts,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
189 (1964): 159; and T. E. Starzl, T. L. Marchioro, G. N. Peters, et al., “Renal Heterotransplantation from Baboon to Man: Experience with Six Cases,”
Transplantation
2 (1964): 752.
67
L. L. Bailey, S. L. Nehlsen-Cannarella, W. Concepción, et al., “Baboon-to-Human Cardiac
Xenotransplantation in a Neonate,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
254 (1985): 3321— 29; A. L. Caplan, “Ethical Issues Raised by Research Involving Xenografts,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
254 (1985): 3339–43; taped interview with Bailey conducted by Dr. Norman Swann, Australian Broadcasting Company, 1985; and T. E. Starzl, J. Fung, A. Tzakis. et al., “Baboon-to-Human Liver Transplantation,”
Lancet
341 (1993): 65–71.
68
R. Nowak, “One Baboon Liver, Two Baboon Livers … ,”
Journal of NIH Research
5 (1993): 36–37; and R. Nowak, “Hope or Horror? Primate-to-Human Organ Transplants,”
Journal of NIH Research
4 (1992): 37–38.
69
J. D. Meyers, N. Flournoy, and E. D. Thomas, “Risk Factors for Cytomegalovirus Infection After Human Marrow Transplantation,”
Journal of Infectious Diseases
153 (1986): 478–88; and E. Dussaix and C. Wood, “Cytomegalovirus Infection in Pediatric Liver Recipients,”
Transplantation
48 (1989): 272–74.
70
O. Chazouilères, D. Mamish, M. Kim, et al., “‘Occult' Hepatitis B Virus as Source of Infection in Liver Transplant Recipients,”
Lancet
343 (1994): 142–46.
71
A. F. Sheids, R. C. Hackman, K. H. Fife, et al., “Adenovirus Infections in Patients Undergoing Bone-Marrow Transplantations,”
New England Journal of Medicine
312 (1985): 529–33; and B. Koneru, R. Jaffe, C. O. Esquivel, et al., “Adenoviral Infections in Pediatric Liver Transplant Recipients,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
258 (1987): 489–92.
72
S. Euvrard, C. P. Noble, J. Kanitakis, et al., “Brief Report: Successive Occurrence of T-Cell and B-Cell Lymphomas After Renal Transplantation in a Patient with Multiple Cutaneous Squamous-Cell Carcinomas,”
New England Journal of Medicine
327 (1992): 1924–26; and I. J. Spiro, D. W. Yandell, C. Li, et al., “Brief Report: Lymphoma of Donor Origin Occurring in the Porta Hepatitis of a Transplanted Liver,”
New England Journal of Medicine
329 (1993): 27–29.
73
E. K. Kuhn, “Deadly Fly Finds Home in Africa,”
New African
, November 1989: 24.
74
W. C. Reeves,
Epidemiology and Control of Mosquito-Borne Arboviruses in California, 1943
—
1987
(Sacramento, CA: California Mosquito and Vector Control Association, 1990).
75
Centers for Disease Control, “Arboviral Infections of the Central Nervous System—United States, 1985,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
35 (1986): 341–49; and Centers for Disease Control, “Arboviral Infections of the Central Nervous System—United States, 1989,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
39 (1990): 407–16.
76
Centers for Disease Control, “Arboviral Surveillance—United States, 1990,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
39 (1990): 593–98; Centers for Disease Control, “Update: St. Louis Encephalitis—Florida and Texas, 1990,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
39 (1990): 756–59; and Centers for Disease Control, “Update: Arboviral Surveillance—Florida, 1990,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
39 (1990): 650–51.
77
A. James, “Molecular Biology of the Mosquito Salivary Gland,” presentation to the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Seattle, November 16, 1992.
78
A. E. Hussein, R. F. Ramig, F. R. Holbrook, and B. J. Beaty, “Asynchronous Mixed Infection of
Culicoides variipennis
with Bluetongue Virus Serotypes 10 and 17,”
Journal of General Virology
70 (1989): 3355–62.
79
B. J. Beaty, D. W. Trent, and J. T. Roehrig, “Virus Variation and Evolution: Mechanisms and Epidemiological Significance,” Chapter 3 in T. Monath, ed.,
The Arboviruses: Epidemiology and Ecology
(Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1988).
80
P. K. Anderson and F. J. Morales, “The Emergence of New Plant Diseases: The Case of Insect-Transmitted Plant Viruses,” presentation to the Workshop on New Disease, Woods Hole, MA, November 7–10, 1993; and K. Schneider, “Study Finds Risk in Making Plant Viruses Resistant,”
New York Times
, March 11, 1994: A16.
81
B. W. Falk and G. Bruening, “Will Transgenic Crops Generate New Viruses and New Diseases?”
Science
263 (1994): 1395–96.
82
A. E. Greene and R. F. Allison, “Recombination Between Viral RNA and Transgenic Plant Transcripts,”
Science
263 (1994): 1423–25.
83
J. Davies, “Inactivation of Antibiotics and the Dissemination of Resistance Genes,”
Science
264 (1994): 375–82.
84
M. A. McClure, M. S. Johnson, D. F. Feng, and R. F. Doolittle, “Sequence Comparisons of Retroviral Proteins: Relative Rates of Change and General Phylogeny,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
85 (1988): 2469–73.
85
H. M. Temin, “Is HIV Unique or Merely Different?”
Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes
2 (1989): 1–9; and H. M. Temin, “Retrovirus Variation,” Chapter 20 in Morse, ed. (1993), op. cit.
86
Temin had no doubt that successful recombination events had occurred in the viral world, and
he cited as an example REV-T, a lymphatic cancer virus of birds. REV-T arose in 1946, the result of a recombination event between a retrovirus and a bird oncogene (inherent cancer-causing gene in the bird's DNA).
87
J. H. Strauss and E. G. Strauss, “Evolution of RNA Viruses,” Annual Review of Microbiology 42 (1988): 657–83.

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