What New Things Are Going To Kill Me?

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Remember in the movie Aliens when Hudson asked, "Is this gonna be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?" Well, the 21st century is going to be one hell of a bug hunt. There's no doubt that eerie new infectious diseases will appear, and the struggles against some of them will make the fight against the AIDS virus look like the opening battle of a war. Of course, by then there will probably be a vaccine for AIDS, and the shot will cost a few dollars or be given for free.

Today new viruses are coming out of nature and "discovering" the human species, while in hospitals and in jungle clinics exceedingly powerful mutant bacteria are emerging that can't be treated with antibiotics. In the past decade, at least 50 new viruses have appeared, including Ebola Ivory Coast, Andes virus, hepatitis G, Fakeeh, Pirital, Whitewater Arroyo, Hendra virus, Black Lagoon virus, Nipah and Oscar virus. This summer West Nile virus showed up for the first time in the western hemisphere, when it was discovered in New York City.

Viruses are moving into the human species because there are more of us all the time. From a virus' point of view, we look like a free lunch that's getting bigger. My grandfather was born in 1899, on the eve of a new century, when there were 1.5 billion people on earth. He died in 1995, and by then there were almost 6 billion people. Thus in one lifetime the population quadrupled, and it's heading for 9 or 10 billion. In nature, when populations soar--and become densely packed--viral diseases tend to break out; then the population drops. This is nature's population-control mechanism. It happens with rodents, insects and even plants. There is no reason to think the human race is exempt from the laws of nature.

Giving these laws an extra push will be the rise of tropical megacities--huge, densely packed cities in less developed nations. A U.N. study predicts that by the year 2015, there will be 26 extremely big cities on the planet, and 22 of them will be in less developed regions. The megacities will include Bombay (26 million people by 2015), Lagos (24 million), Dhaka (19 million) and Karachi (19 million). By 2030, almost 60% of the world's people will live in urban areas. By then, some megacities could have 30 million or more people. The population of California today is 35 million. Take all of California, cram those people into one city, remove most doctors and medical care, take away basic sanitation and hygiene, and what you have is a ticking biological time bomb. Now make eight or 10 such bombs and plant them around the world.

Now wire the bombs together. People travel rapidly by airplane, carrying diseases with them as they fly. The human species has become a biological Internet with fast connections. The bionet will only get faster in the next century--that is, more people will travel by air more often, increasing the speed at which diseases move. If a tropical megacity gets hit with a new virus, New York City and Los Angeles will see it days or weeks later.