• Looming biomedical crises due to ocean pollution, decline in oxygen production and destruction of the ozone layer threaten human security.


• The constant evolution of bacteria suggests the possible emergence of a virus as deadly as AIDS and as quickly propagating as SARS


• Air circulation systems on planes, the great vehicles of globalization, can spread viruses between people and around the world more rapidly than ever before

PANDEMICS: The relatively rapid global spread of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, anthrax and the incredibly fast propagation of SARS, a new highly contagious form of pneumonia, have shown us the range of possible biological threats to security of human and global society. Every year, virologists and bacteriologists analyze and interpret microbial events in an attempt to pre-empt the next environmental threat. However, this work is complicated by the fact that the countries experiencing the most radical population growths are also those confronting the most widespread environmental degradations and worst scales of human suffering. Ocean pollution due to raw sewage, fertilizer, pesticides, and other chemical waste is producing significant changes in costal marine ecospheres. Other rapid ecological changes like the decline in oxygen production from the earth's flora, due both to its overall declining mass and to the lowered range of diversity among vegetation - coupled with the destruction of the earth's ozone layer and increased production of carbon dioxide owing to human fossil fuel consumption, forest burning and the expected increase in oxygen dependent homo sapiens - indicates that a chemical crisis is looming.

The instability of our ecosphere works against humans in the antibiotic-bacteria arms race. Every year, public health officials try to predict the next flu strain with a vaccine, but every year, bacteria evolve new defense mechanisms. Because of confined internal atmosphere, the vehicle responsible for the great globalization of humanity-the jet airplane-functions as a potential threat for microbial transmission. The primary target of this kind of disease or infection, whether accidental or deliberate, is the quickly migrating cosmopolitan "airport" class which would subsequently disseminate the infection around the world. An epidemic, whether naturally occurring or deliberately orchestrated, that introduces a viral substance as deadly as AIDS and as quickly propagating as SARS, is a major threat to human security.