Cultural vectors

Paul W. Ewald

Evolutionary biology, ecology, and epidemiology are among the most interdisciplinary of disciplines. The development of evolutionary epidemiology will undoubtedly draw in still other disciplines. For example, determination of whether a set of characteristics is a cultural vector will require integration of insights from sociology, psychology, and anthropology because one needs to know not only how transmission occurs but also whether the social setting and human behavioural responses will permit transmission from immobilized infect individuals. Consider the cultural characteristics that permit transmission by hypodermic needles. If contaminated needles are moved from immobilized, infected people to susceptible people, and/or if the immobilized, infected people themselves are moved to the dirty needles, then the sets of cultural characteristics that permit such movements satisfy the definition of a cultural vector. Similarly, if intravenous drug users continue to use dirty needles in the face of evidence that dirty needles spread diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis, then the cultural vector involved in needles transmission represents a more formidable evolutionary pressure than if investments in dissemination of such knowledge eliminated the cultural vector.

Fonte: Ewald, P. W. 1988. In Harvey, P. H. & Partridge, L. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 5: 215-45.