Certain microbes need no introduction, and they didn't need a visa to traverse the continents and cause contagion. Tuberculosis, AIDS, hepatitis, influenza, cholera, bubonic plague are among diseases that the book blames on introduced pathogenic microbes. In the United States alone, health-care costs for AIDS average $6 billion a year, while a single outbreak of influenza can incur $300 million in hospitalization costs and take hundreds of lives, says Pimentel. "An increasing threat of exotic diseases exists because of rapid transportation, encroachment of civilization into new ecosystems and increasing environmental degradation," he writes.
The editor-author and his 44 contributing scientist-writers are careful to note that not all introduced species have entirely deleterious effects in their new homes, and many are depended on for human sustenance. Some 98 percent of the U.S. food supply comes from introduced species, such as corn, wheat, rice and other crops, as well as cattle, poultry and other livestock.
Or take the example of Paterson's curse (Echium plantagineum) on Australia. When the weed's toxic alkaloids aren't ruining animals' livers, its flowers produce nectar used by bees for a pale honey that fetches a premium price in the Japanese market. And in the semi-arid rangelands of northern South Australia, the damaging pasture weed is considered such a useful fodder, when handled properly, that cattlemen call it "salvation Jane.
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Contact: Roger Segelken
hrs2@cornell.edu
607-255-9736
Cornell University News Service
31-Jul-2002