Art in Science: Selections from EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES

234 Pages·2014·10.723 MB·English

by  Polyxeni Potter, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Emerging
Infectious Diseases
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Emerging
Infectious Diseases
Art in Science
olyxeni potter
p

centers for disease
control and prevention
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Contents
Foreword vii
Preface: Arts, Science, and the Pursuit of Knowledge i x
Acknowledgments x vii
d isease emergence
1
Everything Flows, Nothing Stands Still 7
Host-Pathogen-Venue Combinations and All That Jazz 11
The Panoramic Landscape of Human Suff ering 14
Oneness, Complexity, and the Distribution of Disease 1 7
Molecular Techniques and the True Content of Reality 23
Chiaroscuro in Art and Nature 26
Art, Science, and Life’s Enigmas 2 9
m icrobial adaptation
and change
33
Not from the Stars Do I My Judgment Pluck 3 8
Ancient Myths and Avian Pestilence 42
The Human Face of Pestilence 45
Nature Hath Fram’d Strange Fellows in Her Time 48
Corona of Power or Halo of Disaster 5 2
Much Madness Is Divinest Sense 55
Drugs, Microbes, and Antimicrobial Resistance 58
climate, weather, ecosystems
61
I Am but Mad North-Northwest: When the Wind is Southerly
I Know a Hawk from a Handsaw 6 6
The Icy Realm of the Rime 70
North American Birds and West Nile Virus 7 4
Trouble in Paradise 7 7
Of Tidal Waves and Human Frailty 80
Memory and Imagination as Predictors of Harm 8 4
Manifesting Ecologic and Microbial Connections 8 8
e conomic development
and land use
91
Rowing on the Schuylkill, Damming on the Yangtze 9 5
The Soot That Falls from Chimneys 99
And Therefore I Have Sailed the Seas and Come to the Holy City
of Byzantium 103
Landscape Transformation and Disease Emergence 107
Phoenix and Fowl—Birds of a Feather 110
Paleolithic Murals and the Global Wildlife Trade 113
Optics and Biologic Connectedness 117
human demographics
and behavior
119
A Flea Has Smaller Fleas That on Him Prey; And These Have Smaller
Still to Bite ’em, and So Proceed Ad Infi nitum 124
Persistence of Memory and the Comma Bacillus 1 28
Exotic Pets and Zoonotic Puzzles 1 32
Human minus Three Pieces of Hair 135
I Rhyme / to See Myself, to Set the Darkness Echoing 139
Protect Me, Lord, from Oil, from Water, from Fire, and from Ants and
Save Me from Falling into the Hands of Fools 144
The SARS Patient 147
technology, industry, travel,
and commerce
149
Hazards of Travel 1 54
Tango with Cows 1 57
Genre Painting and the World’s Kitchen 1 61
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 164
“One Medicine” for Animal and Human Health 1 68
Pale Horse, Pale Rider Done Taken My Lover Away 171
The Way Forward Is the Way Back 175
poverty and conflict
177
Scientifi c Discovery and Women’s Health 182
How Comes It, Rocinante, You’re So Lean? I’m Underfed, with
Overwork I’m Worn 185
What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue? 189
Rats, Global Poverty, and Paying the Piper 193
The Face of Tuberculosis 197
Postal Work Now and Then 199
Art Is the Lie That Tells the Truth 2 02
Index 2 05
vi contents
Foreword
D
oes the world need yet another art book? In a word, yes. In fact, it desperately
needs a great many more art books. As Yogi Berra pointed out, it is déjà vu
all over again.
When the infectious disease leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention posed a similar question in the early 1990s, they wondered whether the
world needed yet another infectious disease journal. They had some help in
addressing the question. That help came to them in the landmark 1992 Institute
of Medicine report, Emerging Infections—Microbial Threats to Health in the United
States , edited by Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, arbovirologist Robert Shope,
and microbiologist Stanley C. Oaks Jr. Although other infectious disease and mi-
crobiology journals existed and fl ourished, none fi lled the public health niche that
was desperately vacant in the era when untreatable AIDS was raging, tuberculosis
was reemerging, and antimicrobial drug-resistant organisms were gaining a foot-
hold in the health care and community setting.
By taking as its mission to inform the academic and public health communities
about emerging infections, the fl edgling Emerging Infectious Diseases journal
adopted a broad scope, one that encompassed not only clinical medicine and epi-
demiology but also microbiology, veterinary medicine, social science, and even the
humanities. Taking the view that readers were public health oriented meant that
they needed actionable information that they otherwise had little time to access or
even read.
Although infectious disease may arguably be called the most successful medical
specialty in history, microbes continually evolve and adapt to novel hosts, new geo-
graphic places, or climatic conditions. That is the challenge Emerging Infectious Dis-
eases readers face; emergence is a never-ending process when it applies to infectious
diseases. As Dr. Lederberg was fond of saying, “It’s their genes versus our wits.”
The contents of Emerging Infectious Diseases cover the global waterfront. Nearly
every issue has reports from nations on nearly all the continents, and articles ad-
dress human and animal infections related to all major categories of organisms.
The news is often not good, and analyses of the morbidity and mortality paint a
bleak picture. Since its earliest years, the journal’s editors sought to communicate
vii
more than the epidemiologic and pathologic fi ndings. They, largely led by Man-
aging Editor Poly Potter, wanted to depict the human aspect of emerging
infections—from pain and death to nobility and triumph. What better way to do
this than to place the human aspect right up front? The fi rst few years of the jour-
nal’s publishing history refl ect a certain amount of experimentation—the initial
covers merely listing the table of contents and cautiously moving toward color im-
ages, and more recent issues representing the concept in full bloom. A cross sec-
tion of covers and accompanying essays are included in this book.
As with its scientifi c scope, Emerging Infectious Diseases adopted a broad view of
art, seeking out images from artists from all nations, eras of history (from prehis-
toric to contemporary), genres, and schools of art, and as many media as the two-
dimensional print covers can accommodate.
Poly Potter has done a great service to the emerging infections community of
scientists. By assembling a collection of covers and essays, she has been more than
responsive to a frequent query: “Why don’t you publish a book of those beautiful
covers?” The question is now answered, and the goal of the book is less to review
the past than it is to stimulate thought about the future. We thought that the world
really did need one more art book, and we are glad that you found this one.
D. Peter Drotman
Editor-in-Chief
Emerging Infectious Diseases
viii foreword
Preface
arts, science, and the pursuit of knowledge
For there will be hard data and they will be hard to understand
For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you
For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question
For there will be the arts
and some will call them
soft data
whereas in fact they are the hard data
by which our lives are lived
—John Stone, “Gaudeamus Igitur: A Valediction”
J
ohn Stone, cardiologist and poet, was an expert on the mechanics of the human
heart, inside and out. When he submitted a manuscript for publication in
Emerging Infectious Diseases , he urged that the cover for that month show a
painting by Georges Rouault, Les Trois Juges (T he Three Judges ), c. 1936 (page xvii).
As the fl edgling journal could not aff ord the copyright fee for this image, he ar-
ranged for payment through his own institution, Emory University in Atlanta. The
painting, a shock of blood red roughly forming the abstract fi gures of the judges,
made a spectacular splash and a fi tting companion to his account of “a man . . . who
had walked and worked among us and died of love.”
Stone’s choice of art for his story about syphilis was unusual. Most authors sub-
mitting manuscripts for publication in science journals view art as graphic illustra-
tion intended to clarify or summarize, to provide a visual explanation of content:
epidemiologic curves, line charts, bar graphs, genomic trees, explicit photographs
of lesions, color representations of organisms under the microscope, images of
vectors or human and animal anatomic features. Fine art, the creative eff ort con-
cerned solely with beauty and collected in museums and galleries, is not the
authors’ usual choice, nor is it often found in science publication.
How did fi ne art become a cover option for a science journal, and how did Stone
know about it? Emerging Infectious Diseases, a public health journal published by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has drawn on fi ne art for its covers
nearly since inception in 1995 with the mission to promote the recognition of new
and reemerging infections and the understanding of factors involved in their pre-
vention and elimination. Charged with communicating the threat of these diseases,
their unpredictable course, and the inevitability of their emergence in time and
ix