Embracing the Monsters

Embracing the Monsters

As the climate emergency unfolds around us it unleashes a plethora of monsters, not least of which are the rapidly accelerating cycles of emerging and re-emerging diseases, a situation which is compounded by rising antimicrobial resistance and slowing rates of vaccination uptake. 

In a new comment published in The Lancet Microbe, Dr. Claas Kirchhelle (UCD School of History) and Dr. Adam Roberts (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) assert that these facts signal the arrival of a new era in which pathogen emergence is the new normal. They argue that effectively addressing the problem will require more than the standard approachs of surveilance and preparedness, and removal or containment of microbial threats. 

How can we move from microbe hunting to microbial management, and what lessons can we learn from today's microbial monsters to guide us into the future?

Read the full article on line, here.