All creatures great and small
When he first arrived at Harvard, curious students often asked Mark Schembri, “So why are you actually here?” It was a fair question. For those who enroll at the Harvard School of Public Health, the human population is typically their prime focus. Not so for Schembri. But the thought of being a veterinarian in a program largely filled with medical doctors didn’t stop the Australian horse specialist from coming to Harvard to pursue his master’s in public health. His response to the skeptics: “Real doctors treat more than one species.” Schembri has spent the past year at Harvard studying zoonotic diseases, infections and viruses that can be transferred from animals to humans, such as bird and swine flu, rabies, and mad cow disease. Understanding how humans approach such pandemics, said Schembri, can inform responses to outbreaks in animal populations, and even lead to better prevention techniques. Schembri knows how devastating infectious diseases can be....