The Conquest of Infectious Disease

Abstract

The creation of the new emerging infectious diseases classification marked a definitive break with the optimism that had surrounded thinking about infectious diseases. By the late 1970s, a widely held belief had formed, in both scientific and in lay thinking, that infectious diseases were a thing of the past. As the EID worldview became popularised through the 1990s, that optimism was completely turned around, so that infectious diseases became thought of as new risks that threaten ‘our’ futures (in the developed world). Was the optimism that infectious diseases had been conquered justified? Did infectious diseases ever go away, or was the impression that they had simply an element in a wider faith that science would continually improve both the quality of life and longevity? What was the historical background to the gains that were made against infectious diseases?