Pandemics: Humans are the culprits

The intensive agribusiness in northeast Brazil is responsible for the massive deforestation of the Cerrado, one of the world’s most diverse tropical ecosystems.

The destruction of ecosystems is not just bad news for the planet, it’s also harmful for the health of humans. The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 is just one manifestation of the proliferation of zoonoses – diseases transmitted from animals to humans.

John Vidal

Journalist, author, and former environment editor of The Guardian newspaper

Cellular ‘Cheaters’ Give Rise to Cancer

 

This unrestrained clumping on a cactus, called fasciation, is a cancerlike phenomenon. CreditLon&Queta/Creative Commons

 

George Johnson, The New York Times, JULY 27, 2015

Maybe it was in “some warm little pond,”Charles Darwin speculated in 1871, that life on Earth began. A few simple chemicals sloshed together and formed complex molecules. These, over great stretches of time, joined in various combinations, eventually giving rise to the first living cell: a self-sustaining bag of chemistry capable of dividing and spawning copies of itself.

Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle

British Psychological Society to launch attack on rival profession, casting doubt on biomedical model of mental illness

• Jamie Doward, The Observer, Sunday 12 May 2013

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Profiles in Science

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• Jean Victor Adam, Rade de Cobija, Bolivie

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• Richard Ellis
• Linda Fried
• Elizabeth Spelke
• Arnold Relman/Marcia Angell
• Michel Sidibé
• Eric Lander
• Nora Volkow
• Richard Dawkins
• Steven Pinker
• Susan Desmond-Hellmann

• Michael Gazzaniga

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/profiles-in-science-series.html#ellis