Title: World Eradication of Infectious Diseases
Description: Eradication of infectious disease is a public-health concept of the current generation. It involves world-wide elimination of the specific pathogen of each infectious disease from its susceptible host since regional eradication may be transient with reintroduction of the infection by foreign carriers or vectors. Even with world eradication of infection, a similar infection may evolve from related organisms or mutations unless the potential pathogen is destroyed in situ. Then, too, non-pathogenic organisms replacing eradicated pathogens in the human body may become a greater cause for alarm. The future of infectious diseases will depend on the ingenuity and resources of man coping with these problems. Man must live with his infection in a state of ecological equilibrium which cannot be disturbed by eradication even in the face of possible invasion by extraterrestrial microorganisms. A germ-free world is an ecological absurdity just as a perpetual motion machine is a mechanical absurdity. Yet, it seems hopeless to achieve an ecological equilibrium between microbes and man when history records such disastrous epidemics comparable to the destructive effects of total warfare. Provocative causes of microbial disease upsetting the ecological equilibrium invoke marked disturbances in man's external and internal environments from which pathogens can never be eradicated. Microbial disease is an inevitable consequence of life in an unstable world. The multiplicity of determinants which affect ecological equilibria limits the power of the experimental method to predict trends. Nevertheless, it has already been possible to produce a world environment in which most people can go through life without any serious infectious disease except the uncontrollable common cold. Infectious diseases should be rare indeed by the end of the century. - Foreword.