Dispensing With Reductionism and Dualism: Biological Anthropological Perspectives Towards Understanding Disease, Epidemics, and Pandemics

At no time in recent history has the topic of disease, epidemics and pandemics been more at the forefront of public conversation than it is now. Previously, the threat of epidemics such as Ebola, the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the plague, were commonly framed as “back then†or “over there.†Perhaps COVID ended the public's delusion. For biological anthropologists, however, the perspective has differed appreciably. Pandemics and epidemics are viewed as integral and repeated aspects of human existence, and the kindling to start an outbreak of gargantuan proportion has been delicately stacked for centuries (if not millennia). If the public (or anyone, for that matter) still clings to the notion that epidemics are “back then†(or maybe done) or “over there†(or affects ‘other people’) please READ. THIS. SPECIAL. ISSUE. Here, the co-editors Andrew Wooyoung Kim and Sabrina Agarwal and invited authors offer insightful and innovative approaches towards understanding disease, epidemics and pandemics, past and present. They offer multiscalar approaches and grapple with complex sampling and methodological biases. They also lay foundations for future research. This special issue makes clear what biological anthropologists know, the medical field has lost, and the public overlooks: the importance of adopting a holistic approach when exploring disease. The tenet is not new. In the 1870s, amidst intense rivalry between Louise Pasture who espoused the germ theory of disease, Antoine Béchamp, a French doctor known for his expertise in cytology, biochemistry and physics, proposed that disease naturally occurred as a chemical reaction (akin to fermentation) and was associated with “the terrainâ€; that is, internal and external environments influencing natural biochemical processes. Bechamp wrote, “the experiment showed me that in parts subtracted from the living animal, the microzymas being no longer in their normal conditions of existence, produced therein chemical alterations, called fermentation, which ...