By Beth Daley, Globe Staff, 6/21/2002
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/172/nation/Disease_threat_cited_in_global _warming+.shtml
Warming temperatures around the world are increasing the geographical range and virulence of diseases, a trend that could mean more devastating epidemics in humans, animals, and plants, according to a report published in the magazine Science yesterday.
Already, the dengue virus in Latin America and Rift Valley fever in the Middle East, which can cause people to vomit blood, have expanded their deadly range. Meanwhile, an oyster disease has gained a foothold in Maine waters, the report said.
Researchers have long accepted that global warming will affect a wide range of organisms, but they are only now beginning to predict what those will be. While climate change scientists have studied a handful of human diseases, yesterday's report was the first to study dozens of diseases in both humans and nonhumans.
''We are seeing lots of anecdotes and they are beginning to tell a story,'' said Andrew P. Dobson, professor at Princeton University's department of ecology and evolutionary biology and one of the authors. ''It's a much more scary threat than bioterrorism.''
The report comes at a crucial time. Earlier this month, the Bush administration concluded that manmade sources of heat-trapping, or greenhouse, gases were responsible for global warming. Yesterday's report adds to the growing evidence that nearly every part of the natural world could suffer in some way from the long-term warming trend.
The report notes that many regions, including New England, could be losing one of their best defenses against disease: cold weather. Every fall, mosquitoes that may be carrying the deadly West Nile virus, for example, are killed off before they multiply and spread the disease too widely. But as global warming heats up the Earth, even by minute degrees, disease-carrying organisms may regenerate faster or go into new areas where populations may have little or no natural resistance.
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