It seems to me that the tropical regions of the earth are the most dangerous places to live, chiefly because ofinsects and disease. Most of the newer diseases seem to originate in the tropis, so it seems reasonable that early man left Africa to escape some of them. The tropics are unhealthy because:
-insects breed year-round, and insect populations (relative to temperate and arctic regions) are enormous
-disease germs have many places to reside(in all of those worms, ticks, spiders and bugs that find the tropics so easy to live in)
-man (in settling tropical regions)has unwittingly aided the reproduction of insects and disease germs by destroying local predators of the vectors of disease (like wipingout the habitats of birds, who eat and naturally control the mosquito population.
So, would mankind suffer leass disease if we all moved to artic regions? Seems likewinter is the beast naturalcheck on disease…I would expect that Sweden is amuch healthier place to live than the Congo. :rolleyes:
Yes. Except we wouldn’t all fit in Sweden. At least not comfortably.
Life is generally easy in the tropics - for us, for insects, for bacteria…
You are more likely to die of disease in the tropics, sure, but just try walking along and picking a piece of fruit when you get hungry in the antarctic.
So many flaws it’s hard to know where to start.
Your entire argument hinges on an assumption that insect borne diseases are the major contributor to human health. Since that assumption is completely wrong your argument has no merit.
Independently insect borne diseases are a relatively minor contributor to human mortality. If you consider all the major human diseases prior to the invention of modern medicine only malaria would make it onto the list while the other places would be filled with smallpox, influenza, cholera, measles, tuberculosis and other diseases. Bubonic plague is not an independent insect zoonosis but is equally dependent on alternative animal hosts for the insects. Note that of the major human diseases almost all are exacerbated by spending long periods in confined places with other people, a situation that is far more prevalent everywhere but the tropics. Even bubonic plague is more common outside the tropics because of the long time periods people spend in close proximity to shelter that also harbours vermin and the need for heavy clothing also means that people outside the tropics tend to habour more fleas.
“All of those worms, ticks, spiders and bugs that find the tropics” aren’t really an issue in the way you suggest since very few microbes have such a broad range of hosts. And those that do tend to be just as happy with temperate animal hosts.
The idea that “winter is the beast naturalcheck on disease” is really strange. Did you stop to think before posting that? Do you relaise that the vast majority of diseases spiked very sharply in winter prior to the invention of modern medicine? Far form being a natural check on disease winter the world over, but especially outside the tropics, is the best time to catch most fatal diseases.
Sweden certainly is a much helathier place to live then the Congo, but do you think that just maybe that has something to do with the average income in Sweden being about 10, 000X higher then for the Congo? Maybe you shold try comparing apples with apples. How about comparing the health of Swedes with an affluent, educated, Caucasian tropical nation rather than an impoverished hellhole in a state of comnstant war? Do you have any reason to believe that Sweden is a healthier place to live than northern Australia for example?
Maybe if everyone moved to the arctic regions we would have less disease, but it’s more probbale that there would be far more disease because people would be constantly crowded into airtight rooms recycling their exhalations. Those are the condition that most pathogens thrive on, not lightly clothed people walking around in full sunlight and open air in the tropics.
Cite? Is there any evidence at all that you are more likely to die of disease in an affluent westenised tropical location such as northern Australia than you are in a temperate region?
Taken as gross probability a random individual may be more likely to die of disease if they live in the tropics but there is no evidence tha it has anything whatsoever to do with being in the tropics per se. The tropics are far less affluent then temperate regions and the single biggest predictors of disease likelihood are income and GDP.
I would like to see some evidence that “you” are more likely to die of disease in the tropics, as opposed to tropical nations having lower incomes and thus higher disease risks.
I’d have to disagree somewhat with Blake.
For example, many medical sociologist have posited that malaria alone had an effect on human evolution and culture that it makes the relatively transient black plagues of Europe look like blips. There were also plenty of other major tropical diseases (Yellow fever comes to mind) and countless parasite diseases (flukes and worms are very easily contracted from food and the environment, and schistosomiasis is the leading cause of blindness in the world) Further “before modern medicine,” tropical diseases were often not well characterized, so fair epidemiological omparisons are difficult.
I also disagree with the OP on many points. Most specifically, the tropics aren’t the major source for new disease strains. It’s just a well-publicized source for exotic diseases, many as rare as they are famous. Sure, AIDS seems to have originated there, and is a worldwide pandemic, but several new strains of influenza -“new diseases” since old immunities may not apply- arise in a small stretch of coastal cities ranging from Hong Kong northward every single year. The 1918 Spanish Influenza which killed more people worldwide in a single year than any prior infectious disease (ten times the peak year of the bubonic plague) apparently originated on American pig farms.
It’s certainly the case that the Congo was a very dangerous place for European colonialsts, and other jungles have presented all manner of illness to soldiers of “Western stock”. It’s true that “warm and wet” are great conditions to incubate molds bacteria and the like (“jungle rot” is a perennial and diverse set of health problems), but I suspect a great deal of that is due to the “immunological and sociological inexperience” of the visiting interlopers - many (but not all) of those diseases weren’t nearly as much of a problem for natives of the region. Also, the large diverse local biomes are great reservoirs for countless nonhuman diseases, a few of which may spread into humans, with varying success, when those ecologies re disrupted by human encroachment – less a matter of new diseases than new exposures, often to variants of animal diseases that aren’t particularly “good” at infecting humans, or are very good at infecting humans, but only in a transient or relatively uncommon variant (e.g. Lassa fever)
The tropics may be inherently comfortable conditions for many kinds of microbial (and nonmicrobial) life, and many of those microbes don’t have our best interestins in mind, even if we aren’t thier primary hosts. Conversely, human population centers are excellent breeding places for diseases where humans are a major (of not only) host. Are the tropics "inherently unhealthy? Maybe, but so are most climates. Believe me, when I shovel my driveway each winter in Boston, I’m constantly aware that “man was not meant to live here”.
Disease and parasitism are facts of life. They may even be responsible for the creation of eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) from bacteria and other prokaryotes billions of years ago. Viruses and bacteria are increasingly seen as playing roles in diseases we have not traditionally considered infectious (e.g. Helicobacter pylori in ulcers, and numeroud viruses implicated in many cancers) I don’t think there is a simple answer to the OP, if there is an answer at all.
I wouldn’t dispute that, which is precisely why I said that malaria makes it into any list of major human diseases.
There are as many if not more major temperate and subtropical diseases. Indeed of the diseases you just listed every single one, without exception, is more prevalent in temperate and subtropical regions than in the tropics.
Can you In fact name one major disease, with the possible exception of malaria, that is a tropical endemic or more prevalent in the tropics?
Before modern medicine many diseases were not well charcterised in the tropics or elsewhere, which makes any suggestion that the tropics are more disease prone an argument from ignorance at best.
However what I said was that of the major human diseases only one, malaria, is a largely tropical affliction. All our other major illnesses either prefernentially afflict temperate regions or else afflict people no matter where they live.