Tony McMichael, A. J. McMichael

Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease

Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This compelling account charts the relentless trajectory of humankind, and its changing survival and disease patterns, across place and time from when our ancient ancestors roamed the African Savannah to today's populous, industrialised, globalising world. This expansion of human frontiers - geographic, climatic, cultural and technological - has encountered frequent setbacks from disease, famine and dwindling resources. The social and environmental transformations wrought by agrarianism, industrialisation, fertility control, social modernisation, urbanisation and mass consumption have profoundly affected patterns of health and disease. Today, as life expectancies rise, the planet's ecosystems are being damaged by the combined weight of population size and intensive economic activity. Global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion and loss of biodiversity pose large-scale hazards to human health and survival. Recognising this, can we achieve a transition to sustainability? This and other profound questions underlie this chronicle of expansive human activity, social change, environmental impact and their health consequences.

Table of contents:
Preface; 1. Disease patterns in human biohistory; 2. Human biology: the Pleistocene inheritance; 3. Adapting to diversity: climate, food and infection; 4. Infectious disease: humans and microbes coevolving; 5. The third horseman: food, farming and famines; 6. The industrial era: the fifth horseman?; 7. Longer lives and lower birth rates; 8. Modern affluence: lands of milk and honey; 9. Cities, social environments and synapses; 10. Global environmental change: overstepping limits; 11. Health and disease: an ecological perspective; 12. Footprints to the future: treading less heavily; Endnotes; Index.

This compelling account charts the relentless trajectory of humankind across time and geography, and its changing survival patterns, from several million years ago when our ancient ancestors roamed the African Savannah to today's populous, industrialised, globalising world.

A compelling account of the relentless trajectory of humankind across time and geography.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 432
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. April 2006
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 244mm x 170mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 741g
• ISBN-13: 9780521004947
• ISBN-10: 0521004942
• Artikelnr.: 21109605

Autorenporträt

Tony (A. J.) McMichael is Professor of Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has held positions in Australia, USA and UK, and has taught widely in Asia, Africa and Europe. He has advised WHO, UNEP, the World Bank and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on dietary, environmental and climatic influences on health. He has enthusiasms for palaeoanthropology and social history. His previous book published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 was Planetary Overload (ISBN 0521 55871 9), a widely acclaimed and influential account of global environmental change and the health of the human species.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
1. Disease patterns in human biohistory
2. Human biology: the Pleistocene inheritance
3. Adapting to diversity: climate, food and infection
4. Infectious disease: humans and microbes coevolving
5. The third horseman: food, farming and famines
6. The industrial era: the fifth horseman?
7. Longer lives and lower birth rates
8. Modern affluence: lands of milk and honey
9. Cities, social environments and synapses
10. Global environmental change: overstepping limits
11. Health and disease: an ecological perspective
12. Footprints to the future: treading less heavily
Notes
Index.