The Bioeconomics of Domesticating Zoonoses

ABSTRACT

The majority of diseases that afflict humans are shared by nonhuman animals, and three-quarters of emerging diseases do so. People have known this for centuries, understanding that diseases traveled the same routes as did traders, migrants, and soldiers. Zoonosis is a process that involves the movement of a pathogen from a nonhuman animal body to a human animal body, which then triggers disease. In the past, this reality mostly served as an impediment to the bioeconomics of working with animals;in more recent years, research on zoonoses has turned animals into part of bioeconomic logic in themselves.