Art in Science: Selections from EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES
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Emerging Infectious Diseases This page intentionally left blank Emerging Infectious Diseases olyxeni potter Art in Science p centers for disease control and prevention Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Catalog record is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-19-931569-7 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in China by Asia Pacifi c Off set Oxford University Press is proud to pay a portion of its sales for this book to the CDC Foundation. Chartered by Congress, the CDC Foundation began operations in 1995 as an independent, nonprofi t organization fostering support for CDC through public-private partnerships. Further information about the CDC Foundation can be found at www.cdcfoundation.org . The CDC Foundation did not prepare any portion of this book and is not responsible for its contents. Contents Foreword vii Preface: Arts, Science, and the Pursuit of Knowledge ix Acknowledgments xvii disease emergence 1 Everything Flows, Nothing Stands Still 7 Host-Pathogen-Venue Combinations and All That Jazz 11 The Panoramic Landscape of Human Suff ering 14 Oneness, Complexity, and the Distribution of Disease 17 Molecular Techniques and the True Content of Reality 23 Chiaroscuro in Art and Nature 26 Art, Science, and Life’s Enigmas 29 microbial adaptation and change 33 Not from the Stars Do I My Judgment Pluck 38 Ancient Myths and Avian Pestilence 42 The Human Face of Pestilence 45 Nature Hath Fram’d Strange Fellows in Her Time 48 Corona of Power or Halo of Disaster 52 Much Madness Is Divinest Sense 55 Drugs, Microbes, and Antimicrobial Resistance 58 climate, weather, ecosystems 61 I Am but Mad North-Northwest: When the Wind is Southerly I Know a Hawk from a Handsaw 66 The Icy Realm of the Rime 70 North American Birds and West Nile Virus 74 Trouble in Paradise 77 Of Tidal Waves and Human Frailty 80 Memory and Imagination as Predictors of Harm 84 Manifesting Ecologic and Microbial Connections 88 economic development and land use 91 Rowing on the Schuylkill, Damming on the Yangtze 95 The Soot That Falls from Chimneys 99 And Therefore I Have Sailed the Seas and Come to the Holy City of Byzantium 103 Landscape Transformation and Disease Emergence 107 Phoenix and Fowl—Birds of a Feather 110 Paleolithic Murals and the Global Wildlife Trade 113 Optics and Biologic Connectedness 117 human demographics and behavior 119 A Flea Has Smaller Fleas That on Him Prey; And These Have Smaller Still to Bite ’em, and So Proceed Ad Infi nitum 124 Persistence of Memory and the Comma Bacillus 128 Exotic Pets and Zoonotic Puzzles 132 Human minus Three Pieces of Hair 135 I Rhyme / to See Myself, to Set the Darkness Echoing 139 Protect Me, Lord, from Oil, from Water, from Fire, and from Ants and Save Me from Falling into the Hands of Fools 144 The SARS Patient 147 technology, industry, travel, and commerce 149 Hazards of Travel 154 Tango with Cows 157 Genre Painting and the World’s Kitchen 161 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 164 “One Medicine” for Animal and Human Health 168 Pale Horse, Pale Rider Done Taken My Lover Away 171 The Way Forward Is the Way Back 175 poverty and conflict 177 Scientifi c Discovery and Women’s Health 182 How Comes It, Rocinante, You’re So Lean? I’m Underfed, with Overwork I’m Worn 185 What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue? 189 Rats, Global Poverty, and Paying the Piper 193 The Face of Tuberculosis 197 Postal Work Now and Then 199 Art Is the Lie That Tells the Truth 202 I n d e x 205 vi contents Foreword oes the world need yet another art book? In a word, yes. In fact, it desperately needs a great many more art books. As Yogi Berra pointed out, it is déjà vu D all over again. When the infectious disease leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posed a similar question in the early 1990s, they wondered whether the world needed yet another infectious disease journal. They had some help in addressing the question. That help came to them in the landmark 1992 Institute of Medicine report, Emerging Infections—Microbial Threats to Health in the United States , edited by Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, arbovirologist Robert Shope, and microbiologist Stanley C. Oaks Jr. Although other infectious disease and mi- crobiology journals existed and fl ourished, none fi lled the public health niche that was desperately vacant in the era when untreatable AIDS was raging, tuberculosis was reemerging, and antimicrobial drug-resistant organisms were gaining a foot- hold in the health care and community setting. By taking as its mission to inform the academic and public health communities about emerging infections, the fl edgling Emerging Infectious Diseases journal adopted a broad scope, one that encompassed not only clinical medicine and epi- demiology but also microbiology, veterinary medicine, social science, and even the humanities. Taking the view that readers were public health oriented meant that they needed actionable information that they otherwise had little time to access or even read. Although infectious disease may arguably be called the most successful medical specialty in history, microbes continually evolve and adapt to novel hosts, new geo- graphic places, or climatic conditions. That is the challenge Emerging Infectious Dis- eases readers face; emergence is a never-ending process when it applies to infectious diseases. As Dr. Lederberg was fond of saying, “It’s their genes versus our wits.” The contents of Emerging Infectious Diseases cover the global waterfront. Nearly every issue has reports from nations on nearly all the continents, and articles ad- dress human and animal infections related to all major categories of organisms. The news is often not good, and analyses of the morbidity and mortality paint a bleak picture. Since its earliest years, the journal’s editors sought to communicate vii more than the epidemiologic and pathologic fi ndings. They, largely led by Man- aging Editor Poly Potter, wanted to depict the human aspect of emerging infections—from pain and death to nobility and triumph. What better way to do this than to place the human aspect right up front? The fi rst few years of the jour- nal’s publishing history refl ect a certain amount of experimentation—the initial covers merely listing the table of contents and cautiously moving toward color im- ages, and more recent issues representing the concept in full bloom. A cross sec- tion of covers and accompanying essays are included in this book. As with its scientifi c scope, Emerging Infectious Diseases adopted a broad view of art, seeking out images from artists from all nations, eras of history (from prehis- toric to contemporary), genres, and schools of art, and as many media as the two- dimensional print covers can accommodate. Poly Potter has done a great service to the emerging infections community of scientists. By assembling a collection of covers and essays, she has been more than responsive to a frequent query: “Why don’t you publish a book of those beautiful covers?” The question is now answered, and the goal of the book is less to review the past than it is to stimulate thought about the future. We thought that the world really did need one more art book, and we are glad that you found this one. D. Peter Drotman Editor-in-Chief Emerging Infectious Diseases viii foreword Preface arts, science, and the pursuit of knowledge For there will be hard data and they will be hard to understand For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question For there will be the arts and some will call them soft data whereas in fact they are the hard data by which our lives are lived —John Stone, “Gaudeamus Igitur: A Valediction” ohn Stone, cardiologist and poet, was an expert on the mechanics of the human heart, inside and out. When he submitted a manuscript for publication in J Emerging Infectious Diseases , he urged that the cover for that month show a painting by Georges Rouault, Les Trois Juges ( The Three Judges ), c. 1936 (page xvii). As the fl edgling journal could not aff ord the copyright fee for this image, he ar- ranged for payment through his own institution, Emory University in Atlanta. The painting, a shock of blood red roughly forming the abstract fi gures of the judges, made a spectacular splash and a fi tting companion to his account of “a man .