Everything about Conservation Medicine totally explained
Conservation medicine is an emerging, interdisciplinary field that studies the relationship between
human and
animal health, and
environmental conditions. Also known as
ecological medicine,
environmental medicine, or
medical geology.
The environmental causes of health problems are complex, global, and poorly understood. Conservation medicine practitioners form multidisciplinary teams to tackle these issues. Teams may involve
physicians and
veterinarians working alongside
researchers and
clinicians from diverse disciplines, including
microbiologists,
pathologists,
landscape analysts,
marine biologists,
toxicologists,
epidemiologists,
climate biologists,
anthropologists,
economists, and
political scientists.
Clinical areas include
HIV,
Lyme disease,
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS),
avian influenza,
West Nile virus,
Nipah virus, and other emerging
infectious diseases.
The term
conservation medicine was first used in the mid-
1990s, and represents a significant
paradigm shift in both
medicine and
environmentalism. While the hands-on process in individual cases is complicated, the underlying concept of interrelationships is quite intuitive, namely, that all things are related. The threat of
zoonotic diseases—cross-
species diseases that travel to humans from other animals—is central. For example, burning huge areas of
forest to make way for farmland is normally seen as an environmental and economic concern. That action may displace a wild animal species, which comes into contact with and infects a domesticated animal species, creating a veterinary problem. The domesticated animal then enters the human food chain and infects people, and a new health threat emerges. Conventional approaches to environmental protection and animal and human health only as an exception examine these connections, whereas in conservation medicine, such relationships are fundamental. Professionals from the many disciplines involved, who usually operate in well-separated spheres, necessarily work closely together.
Social impact
By looking at the environment and health as a continuum, conservation medicine has the potentional to effect rapid change in
public opinion on complex
societal issues, by making the distant and ill-defined, local and pressing. For instance,
global warming may have vaguely defined long-term impacts, but when an immediate effect is a relatively slight rise in air
temperature, which in turn raises the flight ceiling for temperature-sensitive
mosquitoes, allowing them to infect higher
flying migratory
birds, which in turn carry a disease from one country or continent to another, the issue becomes more real. Likewise, the broad topic of
suburban sprawl is made more relevant when seen in terms of the immediate imbalance it brings to rural ecosystems, which increases population densities and forces humans into closer contact with, certain animals (like
rodents), increasing the risk of new cross-species diseases. Seemingly
common sense scenarios like these lie at the heart of conservation medicine. When tied to actual cases (like SARS or HIV/AIDS), this
holistic outlook seems likely to resonate more powerfully with the public than the more abstract explanations of environmental and health issues that are currently common.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Conservation Medicine'.
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