ƹƵ anthropologist’s book, research provide new insight on infectious, chronic degenerative diseases
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.—A ƹƵ faculty member provides critical updates regarding the spread of infectious diseases and rise of chronic and degenerative diseases in a second edition of her co-authored book “Emerging Infections: Three Epidemiological Transitions from Prehistory to the Present” released this summer. Her work on ancient DNA also has been published this summer in several highly lauded scientific journals.
An Oxford University Press peer-reviewed book, “Emerging Infections” is the first comprehensive review of the biological, social and environmental factors that contribute to emerging infectious diseases, like COVID-19, as well as surging rates of chronic and degenerative diseases, like cancer, from prehistory to the present day. It provides an overview of significant developments in health and disease research since the original work was published a decade ago.
Professor Molly K. Zuckerman, a biological anthropologist in ƹƵ’s Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures who recently was appointed as a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, said, “In this new edition, we explore how both ancient and modern changes in human behavior—from the start of farming to the rise of fast, low-cost international travel—has driven recent epidemics, including COVID-19 and obesity. By looking at our health and disease through deep time, not just the present, we can identify the most foundational causes of our current health problems and strategies for ameliorating them now and preventing them in the future.
“We’re facing a future where once controlled diseases, like measles, are surging back because of vaccine hesitancy, and antimicrobials are no longer as effective even against common diseases,