[Perspectives] Human arrogance and epidemics

There was a time not so long ago, in the early 1990s, when warnings about emerging epidemics and infectious diseases were derided, the Cassandras were mocked, and the power of human ingenuity and countermeasures were hailed. Globalisation of HIV/AIDS, of course, curbed such hubris, but medical and public health leaders, including the top tiers of WHO, viewed HIV as an exception to the rule. And as Michael Merson and Stephen Inrig detail in their agonising account The AIDS Pandemic: Searching for a Global Response, that notion of AIDS exceptionalism spawned an international non-response that allowed the virus to sweep across the world, becoming the third largest pandemic in human history.
Source: LANCET - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Perspectives Source Type: research