The History of Disease
an audio report by Elahi Hossain, Araceli Camargo, Hannah Yu-Pearson, and Rhiannon Osborne
2022
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INTRODUCTION
When we look at the history of human health and disease, research suggests there have been three epidemiological transitions - that is, changes in the patterns of death and disease - across the human timeline.
The first transition was the age of pestilence and famine - this occurred around 10,000 years ago as human societies moved away from a nomadic, hunter gatherer lifestyle to embrace the agricultural revolution and form agrarian societies. This shift, which included the establishment of feudal societies, resulted in humans living in longer-term structures in closer proximity to one another and domesticated species for prolonged periods - increasing the levels of infectious diseases (especially zoonoses) through poorer sanitation and novel disease vector routes.
The second transition was the age of receding pandemic - which occurred in tandem with the industrial revolution. As human began migrating from rural farmland in search of greater opportunity and labour in the factories of dense urban settings - humans were exposed to slow, and insidious toxic pollutants from industrial activities (think smog from coal powered operations, asbestos, lead), lived in overcrowded and unsanitary dwellings with poor drainage systems, and reduced access to high quality food and water. This contributed to diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, and respiratory and chronic diseases.
The third transition is the age of degenerative and human-made diseases and ageing populations which we are currently within. As humans societies continue to operate on an infinite growth model that treats environmental pollution and destruction as an externality, more sedentary-fuelled knowledge economies, ever increasing fast-paced and processed lifestyles, and an integration into a globalised network - degenerative and chronic diseases such as cancer, obesity, heart and respiratory disease are our current challenges, but also the reemergence of old and new infectious diseases due to increased antibiotic resistance and exploitative and invasive operations that go into deepest untouched areas of our world.
And what's becoming clearer is that our modern environments are not suited to our biological architecture. New perspectives such as the ‘ancestral susceptibility hypothesis’ suggests that there is a mismatch between the ancestral environments our bodies have adapted to (at a genetic level) over millennia, and our current modern environments, and systems of living (be it our entrenched general economic systems, our food and transport systems…) that have rapidly developed and discharged all these externalities that harm health without a possible chance for our bodies to catch up and adapt to. This mismatch may explain why there is an increased prevalence of chronic diseases such as obesity, and diabetes.
So it's becoming increasingly clear that the relationship between human health and disease is a complex and dynamic interplay between the physical and social environment and the body.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Hannah Yu-Pearson
Hannah has a background in urbanism and city level climate action. She is now exploring new approaches to environmental and health justice, using food and tea as medicine, incorporating the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Rhiannon Osborne
Rhiannon Osborne (she/her) is a 24 year old student doctor, climate & health justice activist, and researcher in health inequalities. She currently organises with the People’s Health Movement, Health for a Green New Deal and the Stop Cambo to end oil and gas expansion in the UK. Through PHM, she was one of the co-founders of the People’s Health Hearing, a space for frontline communities to give testimony on the health impacts of extractivism, colonial violence and the climate crisis.
Araceli Camargo
Araceli is lead scientist at Centric Lab and a cognitive neuroscientist focused on how people interact with urban environments. Araceli Camargo is of Indigenous American descent and holds an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience from King’s College London.
Elahi Hossain
Elahi is lead researcher at Centric Lab. Elahi has a keen interest in medical technology and his role at Centric is to research the neurobiological links between people and the external environment. Elahi holds an MSc in Behavioural Science and is a PhD Candidate in Neuroscience at University College London.