TED Video Nathan Wolfe on Hunting for the next AIDS
2009 March 27
Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering new, deadly viruses where they first emerge — passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa — before they claim millions of lives.
Armed with blood samples, high-tech tools and a small army of fieldworkers, Nathan Wolfe hopes to re-invent pandemic control — and reveal hidden secrets of the planet’s dominant lifeform: the virus.
Nathan Wolfe suggests
I think about the secondary effects of diseases like AIDS that cause a population’s immune system to be suppressed, as a whole. I think of this as a tear in the planet’s meta-immune system. This tear increases the possibility that a new virus will enter. With immunosuppressed hunters, a virus that normally couldn’t survive or adapt to human populations might get a few extra generations and be permitted to adapt to these individuals and humanity.
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TED Video Nathan Wolfe on Hunting for the next AIDS: Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic b.. http://tinyurl.com/csfdrf