ENV 495-01 - Senior Seminar: New and Emerging Infectious Diseases

4 credits (Spring)

The gravest environmental danger facing humanity today is not war, not political upheaval, but pandemic disease. We have come close to having globe-girdling pandemics in recent decades: witness HIV, Marburg Virus, Lassa Fever, Ebola Virus, Zika Virus and three species of Corona viruses (to name a few). Throughout history, pandemic diseases, vectored by arthropods, have killed more than half of all people - approximately 54 billion people - who have ever lived. Witness smallpox, the black death, yellow fever and malaria. The Seminar will examine the interfaces – ecological, cultural, agricultural and epidemiologic - between zoonoses and humans in the ecotones - urban and rural, terrestrial and marine - where these saltations have taken, and are, taking place.

Prerequisite: Open to Junior and Senior Environmental Studies Concentrators.
Instructor: Campbell