The Origins of Infectious Disease
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2011
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins of infectious disease. Infectious disease has been with us for millennia. There are reports of ancient outbreaks of plague in the Bible, and in numerous historical sources from China, the Middle East and Europe. Other infections, including smallpox, tuberculosis and measles, have also been known for centuries. But some diseases made their first appearances only recently: HIV emerged around a century ago, while the Ebola virus was first recorded in the 1970s.But where do the agents of disease come from, and what determines where and when new viruses and bacteria appear? Modern techniques allow scientists to trace the histories of infective agents through their genomes; the story of disease provides a fascinating microcosm of the machinery of evolution.With:Steve JonesProfessor of Genetics at University College LondonSir Roy AndersonProfessor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College LondonMark PallenProfessor of Microbial Genomics at the University of Birmingham.Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:47.0 | Hello in his history of the wars the historian Procopius of Caeseria records a |
| 0:52.1 | dreadful event which befell Byzantine in the year 542. |
| 0:57.0 | At this time he wrote, they came a pestilence by which the whole human race was nearly annihilated. It's said that half the city's population |
| 1:04.9 | died of bubonic plague in perhaps the most serious outbreak of the disease before the |
| 1:08.9 | black death ravaged Europe in the 14th century. Plague and other infectious diseases such as leprosy |
| 1:15.1 | are documented in ancient literature and have apparently been with us for millennia but |
| 1:19.2 | others such as HIV and Ebola have emerged only in recent decades. So where do infectious diseases come |
| 1:26.0 | from and how can we trace their origins? Procopius believed the plague he documented |
| 1:30.6 | had begun in Egypt. Modern DNA techniques suggested in |
| 1:33.7 | in fact it originated in China. With me to discuss infectious disease and its |
| 1:38.1 | origins are Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London. |
| 1:43.0 | Sir Roy Anderson, Professor of Infectious Disease |
| 1:46.2 | Epidemiology at Imperial College London |
| 1:48.8 | and Mark Palin Professor of Microbial Genomics |
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