Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures

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Cambridge University Press, 28 juin 2001 - 413 pages
Charting the relentless trajectory of humankind across time and geography, Tony McMichael highlights the changing survival patterns of our ancient ancestors, who roamed the African savannahs several million years ago, to today's populous, industrialized, and globalized world. McMichael explores the changes in human biology, culture, and surrounding environments that have influenced patterns of health and disease over the course of humankind's history, arguing that the health of populations is primarily a product of the interaction of human societies with the wider environment, its various ecosystems, and other life-support processes. Tony McMichael is professor of epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has held positions in Australia, USA, and UK, and has taught widely in Asia, Africa, and Europe. He has advised WHO, UNEP, the World Bank and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on public health issues. His previous book, Planetary Overload (Cambridge University Press, 1993) was a widely acclaimed and influential account of global environmental change and the health of the human species.
 

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Table des matières

Disease patterns in human biohistory
1
Human biology the Pleistocene inheritance
30
Adapting to diversity climate food and infection
58
Infectious disease humans and microbes coevolving
88
The Third Horseman food farming and famines
123
The industrial era the Fifth Horseman?
152
Longer lives and lower birth rates
185
Modern affluence lands of milk and honey
220
Cities social environments and synapses
250
Global environmental change overstepping limits
283
Health and disease an ecological perspective
318
Footprints to the future treading less heavily
341
Notes
366
Index
403
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