When Globalization Brings Brain-Invading Worms
There is a long, grim history of infectious diseases crisscrossing the globe aboard giant ships.
Explorers looking to set up new colonies carried smallpox, measles, and other deadly viruses with them to distant lands. Even the vessels they used to get there contributed to the spread of disease. Infected ballast water from cargo ships traveling to South America, for example, has been blamed for introducing cholera there.
The rise of aviation exacerbated the global spread of disease, effectively shrinking the distance between any one place and the next. (Vaccines have been a major mitigating factor, but there are always emerging diseases, illnesses for which there are no vaccines, and unvaccinated people.) There are tens of thousands of commercial
