Monkeying Around With Disease

According to E-The Environmental Magazine (Connecting The Dots - November/December 2004 issue)- Humans may be the enemy of virtually all species including ourselves!
Ever hear of Monkey Pox? This disease was introduced (As in: Hi, Mom. Meet my date - umm, Death), in to the Midwest by pet traders who brought in a rat infected with monkey pox from Gambia. It infected some prairie dogs who were sold at a “pet swap”
The prairie dogs in turn infected 37 people, some of which died. But it works the other way too.
In Rwanda around the late 1980s a high death rate of mountain gorillas was attributed to measles contracted because they had more contact with humans due to their popularity given to them by the mountain gorilla researcher, Diane Fossey.
More locally rabies is on the increase thanks to human tinkering. As reported by the CDC:

Rabies in raccoons was first described in Florida in the 1950s and spread slowly during the next three decades into Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Through translocation of infected animals, raccoon rabies was unintentionally introduced in the mid-Atlantic states. In 1977, near the Virginia-West Virginia border, reports of a single, rabid raccoon in Hardy County, West Virginia, and three more rabid raccoons in the adjoining counties of Virginia in 1978 initially drew little attention. Since then, this unremarkable focus of rabies in raccoons expanded to form the most intensive rabies outbreak in the United States. More than 45,000 raccoons have died of rabies, as well as over 4,200 cats and nearly 3,000 dogs. Moreover, with the close association of raccoons and humans in suburban settings, an increased number of people have been exposed to potentially rabid animals and have needed post-exposure rabies prophylaxis. At present, an estimated 20,000-40,000 people are exposed to rabies each year in the United States. Raccoon rabies now extends throughout approximately 1 million square km along the eastern states from Florida to Maine, and is now invading the midwest at the Pennsylvania-Ohio border.

Weather it is our activities affecting climate through increased CO2 , pollution, environmental destruction, translocation of animals or just simple travel it appears that humans are a disease’s best friend!