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SUMMARY:The early origins of the Mortality Revolution: a perspective from 
 evolutionary biology - Dr Romola Davenport\, Cambridge Group for the Histo
 ry of Population and Social Structure
DTSTART:20190614T164500Z
DTEND:20190614T181000Z
UID:TALK124354@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Antonio M. M. Rodrigues
DESCRIPTION:One of the most profound changes of the last two centuries has
  been the ‘Mortality Revolution’\, the dramatic decline in mortality t
 hat has resulted in a more than doubling of life expectancy globally. In n
 ow-developed countries the most significant improvements occurred before t
 he development of antibiotics and before routine immunisation against most
  childhood diseases. This paper examines the early stages of the Mortality
  Revolution from an evolutionary point of view\, in terms of the trade-off
 s between virulence and disease transmission. For diseases that are transm
 itted person-to-person and cannot persist outside a host then there is evi
 dence of strong selective pressure against high host lethality. However fo
 r pathogens which don’t depend on their human host for transmission or t
 hat can persist outside a human host (including plague\, typhus\, cholera\
 , typhoid\, smallpox and malaria) then the conflict between virulence and 
 dispersal is reduced. Fortuitously\, the properties that permitted these d
 iseases to be so lethal also made it easier in many cases for relatively w
 eak interventions to break the chain of disease transmission. The early co
 ntrol of these major diseases was associated with large reductions in mort
 ality\, but also shifted the distribution of causes of death towards the l
 ess virulent diseases of the extremes of age and of poverty\, thus increas
 ing socioeconomic inequalities in survival.
LOCATION:Wolfson College\, Gatsby Room
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