The Origins of Infectious Disease

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2011

⏱️ 42 minutes

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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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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:09.2	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:10.9	Hello, in his history of the wars, the historian Procopius of Caesare records a dreadful
0:16.2	event which befell Byzantine in the year 542.
0:20.7	At this time he wrote, there came a pestilence by which the whole human race was nearly annihilated.
0:27.0	It's said that half the city's population died of bubonic plague in perhaps the most serious outbreak of the disease before the black death ravaged Europe in the 14th century.
0:36.0	Plague and other infectious diseases such as leprosy are documented in ancient literature and have apparently been with us for millennia, but others such as HIV and Ebola have emerged
0:46.2	only in recent decades. So where do infectious diseases come from and how can we trace their origins?
0:52.1	Procopius believed the plague he documented had begun in Egypt.
0:55.0	Modern DNA techniques suggested in fact it originated in China.
1:00.0	With me to discuss infectious disease and its origins are Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London.
1:06.4	Sir Roy Anderson, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London,
1:12.4	and Mark Palin Professor of Microbealeodynamics
1:15.2	at the University of Birmingham. Steve Jones, let's start with a specific example,
1:19.1	the plague of Justinian which I mentioned, is known medically as the Bubonic Plague. What causes that and where did it come from?
1:26.0	Well, that's 541, as I remember. The Peg was just in the first real account we have of a massive disease in historic times,
1:34.6	although the Bible talks of earlier plagues which might possibly have been the same thing.
1:39.0	It's caused by a bacterium, it used to be called pastorala pest after Pasteur, but it's now been renamed as
1:44.9	Eucinea Pestis. And it's an interesting disease, first of all because it's so lethal.
1:49.2	It kills, often kill half or more the number of people that infects, often very quickly.
1:55.4	It spreads very quickly and like many diseases, perhaps all diseases, it comes from animals.
2:00.2	It comes from animals that are all around us, particularly the black, particularly rats of different kinds and a marmot in Central Asia.
	...

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