MIT Science for the People Seminar Series presents
Do Big Farms Make Big Flu?
The agroeconomics of H5N2, Ebola and Zika
Tue. Jun 21, 6:30 pm
MIT 4 - 231
77 Mass Ave Cambridge
Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places quickly. There is no shortage of news items on the hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry—each animal genetically identical to the next—packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed, and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants. Other deadly diseases, including Ebola and Zika, emerge more indirectly but decisively out of neoliberal agroeconomics.
Drawing from his new book, Big Farms Make Big Flu, evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace will explore the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations.
Bio: Rob Wallace is an evolutionary biologist presently visiting the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Global Studies. His research has addressed the evolution and spread of influenza as it relates to the economics of agriculture, the social geography of HIV/AIDS in New York City, the emergence of Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus out of Ugandan prehistory, the agroeconomics of Ebola, and the evolution of infection life history in response to antivirals. Wallace is co-author of Farming Human Pathogens: Ecological Resilience and Evolutionary Process (Springer) and the newly published Big Farms Make Big Flu (Monthly Review Press). He has consulted on influenza for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Reviews
“If you’ve missed the wit and brilliance of Stephen Jay Gould, here’s a consolation: holistic, radical science from the frontlines of the battle against emergent diseases. Using the wide-angle lens of political ecology, Rob Wallace demonstrates the central roles of the factory-farming and fast-food industries in the evolution of avian flu and other pandemics that threaten the entire planet. Bravo to MR Press for publishing this landmark collection of essays.”
—Mike Davis, author, Monster at Our Door and Planet of Slums
“These essays put you in the company of a delightful mind. Wallace is filled with curiosity, deep learning, and robust skepticism. In his company, you’ll learn about phylogeography, clades and imperial epizoology. He can also weave a mean story, with the kinds of big picture analysis that puts him alongside minds like Mike Davis’s. Who else can link the end of British colonial rule in China or the devaluation of the Thai Baht to the spread of bird flu? This collection is a bracing innoculant against the misinformation that will be spewed in the next epidemic by the private sector, government agencies and philanthropists. My copy is highlighted on almost every page. Yours will be too.”
—Raj Patel, author, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
“In Big Farms Make Big Flu, Rob Wallace stands boldly on the shoulders of giants in clearly expressing the problems with our agroindustrial system that so many already see but far too few are willing to say. With mordant wit and a keen literary sensibility, Wallace follows the story of this dysfunctional—and dangerous—system wherever it may lead, without regard to petty concerns of discipline or the determined ignorance of the commentariat and mainstream research institutions. Big Farms Make Big Flu shows the power, possibility, and indeed, absolute necessity of political ecology, lest we not only fail to properly understand the world, but fail to change it.”
–M. Jahi Chappell, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)
About us
The goal of the MIT Science for the People student group is to provide a platform for students, staff, and faculty to discuss ideas on using science to make a better world.