Joshua Lederberg warned the world about emerging infections

Person: Joshua Lederberg
Lived: 1925–2008
Field: Microbiology, genetics
From: American

The story

By the late twentieth century, antibiotics and vaccines had led many people, including some policymakers, to believe that infectious diseases were largely a problem of the past. Joshua Lederberg disagreed. A Nobel laureate who had discovered that bacteria swap genes, he knew how quickly microbes adapt. For decades he advised American governments and the World Health Organization on health and science, and he chaired the President’s Cancer Panel. He served on the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board from 1979 and for many years on the World Health Organization’s Advisory Health Research Council, and in 1978 he became president of The Rockefeller University in New York.

In 1992, with the virologist Robert Shope, Lederberg co-chaired a committee of the Institute of Medicine, part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which produced the report Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States. It argued that new diseases were appearing and old ones returning, and it identified six factors driving their emergence: human demographics and behaviour, technology and industry, economic development and land use, international travel and commerce, microbial adaptation and change, and the breakdown of public health measures. It set out recommendations for strengthening the nation’s ability to detect and respond to them. HIV, which had emerged only a decade earlier, was a vivid example of what it described.

The report drew attention to gaps in the country’s ability to detect outbreaks and monitor disease,. Its message was simple: microbes evolve constantly, and complacency is dangerous. Lederberg also worked to limit the threat of biological weapons and in 1999 edited Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat.

Later outbreaks, from SARS in 2003 to the COVID-19 pandemic, showed how prescient the warning had been. Lederberg continued to lecture on new and re-emerging infectious diseases and on bioterrorism until late in his life, and he died in New York in 2008.

Why it matters

Lederberg’s warnings helped persuade governments to invest in disease surveillance and outbreak preparedness, systems that protect people everywhere from new epidemics.

About Joshua Lederberg

Rabbi’s son who found at 21 that bacteria swap genes, explaining how antibiotic resistance spreads and laying groundwork for genetic engineering. Nobel Prize 1958.

Read the full profile

Joshua Lederberg

1925–2008 · Microbiology, genetics

View profile →