576
60.3 Ethics and Epidemiology
Addressing the combination of horseshoe bats and Chinese pangolins together possibly infecting humans at a live-animal market in Wuhan, China, Johnathan Epstein,
the epidemiologist/veterinarian involved in tracking down the animal source of the
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus from civet cats in animal markets
in Guangdong, China, in 2003, has stated that “about half of all known human
pathogens are zoonotic, which means they originated in animals.”
18
In the last century, at least 70 major infectious disease outbreaks and/or continuing animal-transmitted diseases have tortured all those hundreds of millions of victims concerned, in a systemic, combinatorial mayhem that remains fundamentally
an ecological result of human ignorance, indifference, cruelty, and trespass. Some
of those diseases, and the implicated species disrupted, like the current “beast,”
include: Anthrax—numerous farm animal species; Bubonic plague—dozens of
mammalian taxa from camels and goats to sheep and rabbits; Chagas disease—
armadillos; new variant Creutzfeldt–Jacob disease, in humans, “mad cow disease”—bovines; Ebola virus—other primates; Giardiasis, Rabies and
Influenza—dozens of wild and semi-wild mammals; Lyme disease—the deer/tick
18 See “’This is not the bat’s fault’: A disease expert explains where the coronavirus likely comes
from,” By Brian Resnick, February 12, 2020, VOX, https://www.vox.com/science-andhealth/2020/2/12/21133560/coronavirus-china-bats-pangolin-zoonotic-disease, Accessed April 1,
2020.
Fig. 60.5 A free cow singingly happily, Upstate New York. (Photo © M.C. Tobias)
60 Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2
60.3 Ethics and Epidemiology
Addressing the combination of horseshoe bats and Chinese pangolins together possibly infecting humans at a live-animal market in Wuhan, China, Johnathan Epstein,
the epidemiologist/veterinarian involved in tracking down the animal source of the
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus from civet cats in animal markets
in Guangdong, China, in 2003, has stated that “about half of all known human
pathogens are zoonotic, which means they originated in animals.”
18
In the last century, at least 70 major infectious disease outbreaks and/or continuing animal-transmitted diseases have tortured all those hundreds of millions of victims concerned, in a systemic, combinatorial mayhem that remains fundamentally
an ecological result of human ignorance, indifference, cruelty, and trespass. Some
of those diseases, and the implicated species disrupted, like the current “beast,”
include: Anthrax—numerous farm animal species; Bubonic plague—dozens of
mammalian taxa from camels and goats to sheep and rabbits; Chagas disease—
armadillos; new variant Creutzfeldt–Jacob disease, in humans, “mad cow disease”—bovines; Ebola virus—other primates; Giardiasis, Rabies and
Influenza—dozens of wild and semi-wild mammals; Lyme disease—the deer/tick
18 See “’This is not the bat’s fault’: A disease expert explains where the coronavirus likely comes
from,” By Brian Resnick, February 12, 2020, VOX, https://www.vox.com/science-andhealth/2020/2/12/21133560/coronavirus-china-bats-pangolin-zoonotic-disease, Accessed April 1,
2020.
Fig. 60.5 A free cow singingly happily, Upstate New York. (Photo © M.C. Tobias)
60 Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2