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When Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome ( Aids )

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When Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) appeared in the early 1980’s on United States’ soil, people - including healthcare professionals - were confused about its nature and origin (Aids.gov). The public looked for a scapegoat and found it in the gay male contingent (Isay). What if a similar phenomenon happened, but in a keystone insect? Rowan Jacobsen, in Fruitless Fall, asserts that a comparable type of illness is affecting the honey bee, apis mellifera; the illness, now termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), seems transmissible and causes “extraordinarily high disease loads” (63-82). According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service (ARS), there is no effective treatment for the disease and viral loads (Kaplan). Jacobsen is an award-winning author of five books, among them several anthologies, about the complex relationship between food and environment. In Fruitless Fall, he provides an comprehensive analysis of the honey bee’s current agricultural existence, with special attention to human impact on its life. As with the AIDS epidemic, beekeepers, media, and agriculturalists began searching for a culprit. Jacobsen alleges that there is no singular cause for CCD - rather, a plethora of problems with which to contend. These include: monocultures and malnutrition, pesticides and antibiotics, urbanization and deforestation, as well as the usual virii, bacteria, and pests which predominate in raising bees (Jacobsen 68, 137-147). Likewise, he offers

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