Page 174 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

aids 59

Current Trends
The relative importance in the world agricultural econ- AIDS
omy of peasant/household and industrial production is
now increasing while elite agriculture is in decline, but he appearance in Western medical literature in 1981
both modern peasant/household farming and industrial Tof a strange and inexplicable cluster of clinical
farming pose challenges.The green revolution’s reliance manifestations—unusual opportunistic infections, can-
on increased chemical fertilizers and pesticides has led to cers, and metabolic or neurological disorders—marked
serious water, air, and even oceanic pollution.The main the emergence of what would become a global pandemic
hope for reducing such damage while still increasing known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or
yields rests with our increasing ability to modify plants by AIDS. Efforts to find a cure for AIDS are in full swing at
transferring genes from other species. However, several the beginning of the twenty-first century, but initial
types of destructive business practices associated with the responses to the onset of the crisis were sluggish.Those
firms that have pioneered the commercial development of responses have been determined by cultural attitudes
this technology have exposed serious deficiencies in the toward disease (both epidemic and sexually transmitted)
way current law addresses the interests of the great mass and by the socioeconomic disadvantages of the popula-
of agriculturalists and agricultural stability. Efforts to tions most closely associated with AIDS (homosexual
correct them have been going forward very slowly. males, male and female sex workers, drug users, and cit-
izens of third-world countries).
Murray J. Leaf
See also Cereals; Horticultural Societies History of the
Epidemic
While epidemiologists who study the origins of disease
Further Reading
rely in part on documentation such as medical and
Bayless-Smith, T. P. (1982). The ecology of agricultural systems. Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. autopsy reports, and material evidence such as serum and
Boserup, E. (1981). Population and technological change:A study of long- tissue samples, tracing the history of a disease ultimately
term trends. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gregoire, J.-P. (1992). Major units for the transformation of grain: The requires a certain amount of speculation. In the case of
grain-grinding households of southern Mesopotamia at the end of the virus that causes AIDS (human immunodeficiency
the third millennium BCE. In P. C. Anderson (Ed.), Prehistory of virus or HIV, first isolated in 1984), a preponderance of
agriculture: New experimental and ethnographic approaches. Mono-
graph #40. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of evidence suggests it originated among monkeys in west-
California. ern Africa, moving from simian to human populations
Higham, C. (1995).The transition to rice cultivation in southeastern Asia.
In T. D. Price & A. B. Gebauer (Eds.), Last hunters first farmers. Santa perhaps as early as the mid-twentieth century. From there
Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. it was rapidly transmitted from human to human by
Leaf, M. J. (1984). Song of hope:The green revolution in a Punjab village. means of infected bodily fluids such as blood, semen, or
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Schusky, E. L. (1989). Culture and agriculture. New York: Bergen & vaginal secretions.
Garvey. Increased travel between rural and urban Africa in the
Smith, B. D. (1998). The emergence of agriculture. New York: Scientific
American. postcolonial period, as well as travel between Africa and
Turner, B. L., & Brush, S. B. (1987). Comparative farming systems. New Europe or the United States, helped spread the virus to
York: Guilford Press. the developed world. A number of aspects of modern
Zohary, D. (1992). Domestication and the Near Eastern crop assem-
blage. In P. C. Anderson (Ed.), Prehistory of agriculture: New experi- society—including population mobility, relaxed sexual
mental and ethnographic approaches. Monograph #40. Los Angeles: mores, intravenous drug use, and medical innovations
Institute of Archaeology, University of California.
Zohary, D., & Hopf, M. (2000). Domestication of plants in the Old World like blood transfusion and organ transplantation—have
(3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. facilitated the spread of HIV, which lives in the body for