Gravest Challenge of the 21st Century May Be Disease

May 30, 2009— -- Earthquakes and hurricanes can devastate an entire country in just moments. Global warming could gradually raise sea levels, wreaking havoc on the climate and on people's way of life.

And with these potential disasters may come an even more insidious menace, one that could silently sneak up on a population and has the potential to kill thousands, even millions of people in a single strike: disease.

"One of the real challenges we may face in the future is a new disease that sweeps across the planet -- because we're all so tightly connected together," says Thomas Homer Dixon, a political science professor and author of "The Upside of Down."

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The stage has already been set for life-threatening illnesses to pass effortlessly across international borders, without discriminating between old and young, male or female. Our modern lifestyles and high volume of global air travel enable rapid and efficient dissemination of germs and viruses. Now a changing climate may be contributing to the spread of disease as well.

Illnesses like malaria, dengue fever and the lesser-known Chickengunya, a mosquito-transmitted virus, have already reached beyond the tropical regions where they are normally confined into more temperate zones. In today's world, it is difficult to predict the journey a contagious illness will take or how many people may become sick. Swine flu, thought to have originated in Mexico, has infected people across the world.

"People can be persistently infected with certain types of viruses and bacteria and show no signs of disease," says Dr. Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and neurology at Columbia University. "But they can also be capable of transmitting infection with terrible consequences to people who've not seen it before."

In developing countries, overcrowding in large cities, underfunded health-care systems and lack of sanitary conditions set the stage for disease to fester. Each year, millions of people die from diseases related to unclean water, such as cholera and guinea worm. These deaths are largely preventable, but if drastic measures aren't taken to clean up the world's water supplies, the problem will only get worse.