By Ralph Nader

UNINTENTIONALLY, THE animal kingdom is striking back at Homo sapiens, which is not yet developing a wise response. Recently, the Washington Post listed some of the attacks in an article headlined "Why So Many New Infections Are Coming from Animals." AIDS, SARS, West Nile virus, hantavirus, influenza, Lyme disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad-cow disease), and monkeypox are some of the diseases that animals transmit to humans.

All this is nothing new. The black death, which took millions of lives during the 14th century in Asia and Europe, came from infected rats. Smallpox, another slayer of tens of millions over the centuries, is believed to have been passed to humans from camels. And the massive toll of about 50 million lives in 1918-19 originated in Chinese ducks and migrated to Chinese pigs before moving to the global human pandemic.

There was a period in the mid-20th century when a lull occurred, juxtaposed with the advent of modern antibiotics, which led to a complacency. Graduate students at the Harvard School of Public Health were advised not to go into the field of infectious diseases because antibiotics were rapidly eradicating such diseases. Unfortunately, the good professors did not adequately recognize the mutational capability of bacteria and viruses.

The HIV virus struck in the United States in the early 1980s, followed by a number of new contagious entrants. Experts tend to concur that animals are transmitting parasites, viruses, and bacteria more rapidly than in previous decades. The reasons: more travel around the world, more trafficking in exotic pets, more disruption of habitats, climate changes spreading hosts over newer geographic areas, and industrial agriculture, which involves feeding animal remains to animals, to mention a few.

To say that infectious-disease specialists (and there are not enough of them) are worried is to engage in understatement. The Post quotes Dr. Robert G. Webster, a leading virologist at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis: "There are probably hundreds, if not thousands – maybe even millions – of viruses out there. We don't even know they're there until we disturb them. SARS is probably just a gentle breeze of what one of these big ones is going to do someday."

"Gentle breeze?" Webster was referring to a fatality count that is still less than 1,000 worldwide from SARS. But look at the economic toll. It has cost China at least $30 billion in lost production (worker absences), lost export sales, and lost tourism. It has dampened the economies of East Asia and Toronto, Canada.

Just last week, Kodak said the SARS epidemic in Asia has damaged its sales in China. Even the New York Times said its second-quarter earnings would come in below Wall Street's expectations, citing the SARS virus and its impact on hotel and travel advertising among the leading explanations.

Modern-day economies increasingly are composed of "discretionary expenditures" that can be stopped because of anxiety, fear, or panic. People have to buy food, clothing, and shelter, for example; they don't have to be tourists or shop for modest luxuries. This layer of instability adds another consequence to the actual sickness, anguish, and expense of these zoonotic diseases.

Get used to that phrase – "zoonotic diseases," or sicknesses transmitted from animals to humans. George W. Bush also better get used to speaking out about zoonotic weapons of mass destruction. He has said and done very little about preparing the nation for these rapidly striking assaults by microscopic, lethal organisms.

President Bush needs to sit by himself and engage in some serious introspection about his insane expenditures and tax-cutting-for-the-wealthy priorities. The entire annual budget that nations have given to the World Health Organization amounts to what one, strategically outdated B-2 bomber costs the Pentagon at a discounted price – just over $1 billion.

The Centers for Disease Control – our country's front line to alert, arouse, and respond to existing and fast-looming zoonotic diseases – needs more resources and more training of operational scientists and epidemiologists. The National Institutes of Health has been receiving more money for its previously languishing infectious-disease research programs, but thousands of new infectious-disease specialists across the entire continuum of challenges need to be trained.

Several billions of dollars a month are being spent to keep more than 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, where no use of Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" or credible threats to the United States have occurred or been found.