Talk this Friday, February 24th, 1:30 pm, ten Hoor 30, UA, Tuscaloosa
Dr. Rob Wallace (author of "Big Farms, Big Flu"; and "Neoliberal Ebola")
University of Minnesota
Title: Bird flu, Ebola, and Zika: When Evolution Meets Political Economy
Our economy is transforming planet Earth into planet Farm. Agribusiness’s impact extends to the deadliest of diseases. Ebola and Zika both recently re-emerged when logging, mining, and intensive agriculture opened up neotropical forests to their escape. There are other pathogens evolving more directly off megafarms. We can model such connections, but there are broader implications in play as well. The search for a more perspicacious evolutionary biology is not necessarily divided from the fight for a better world. Hume's guillotine and Moore's naturalist fallacy, wise cautionaries at the heart of much of the natural sciences, are often circumstantially fallacious. Whereas many a new scientist is taught in the lab--as opposed to the classroom--that conducting good research revolves around avoiding professionally awkward study questions, in actuality the struggles for truth and justice can be deeply entwined.
Special thanks to the Department of Anthropology, the Blount Initiative, New College, and the EVOS program for sponsoring this lecture.
Dr. Rob Wallace (author of "Big Farms, Big Flu"; and "Neoliberal Ebola")
University of Minnesota
Title: Bird flu, Ebola, and Zika: When Evolution Meets Political Economy
Our economy is transforming planet Earth into planet Farm. Agribusiness’s impact extends to the deadliest of diseases. Ebola and Zika both recently re-emerged when logging, mining, and intensive agriculture opened up neotropical forests to their escape. There are other pathogens evolving more directly off megafarms. We can model such connections, but there are broader implications in play as well. The search for a more perspicacious evolutionary biology is not necessarily divided from the fight for a better world. Hume's guillotine and Moore's naturalist fallacy, wise cautionaries at the heart of much of the natural sciences, are often circumstantially fallacious. Whereas many a new scientist is taught in the lab--as opposed to the classroom--that conducting good research revolves around avoiding professionally awkward study questions, in actuality the struggles for truth and justice can be deeply entwined.
Special thanks to the Department of Anthropology, the Blount Initiative, New College, and the EVOS program for sponsoring this lecture.
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