Leandra Jacobson 4/29 SWINE FLU

The recent “epidemic” of the swine flu is a perfect example of Shepard’s ideas in the Tender Carnivore. He explains his theory of why this happened in the section we covered about population density and disease. I heard on the news that the flu is not received from eating meat but from living in close quarters to pigs, mixing the variations of the disease and creating the “swine flu.” This completely coincides with how Shepard explains the increase of diseases with the increase of people densely packed in an area. A dis4ease will mutate and change from person to person, become immune to vaccines, and be constantly adapting as people do to their environment. He says, “the number of diseases has increased with world population,” as the emergence of this flu is not the first time but a scattered pattern of a possible epidemic to come (98). Whether it is being blown up by the media or not, it is still a frightening thought especially from being a person recently in an international airport. Shepard says the ease of transmission by close quarters, like being on an airplane, is the altered habits of humans that make this contagion possible. Diseases thrive on our way of life, something that would not exist if we did not live so closely or live in this agricultural society where this disease would have formed from the farming of pigs.