Thanks to archeobiology, it is possible to find traces of very old diseases in bones.

While the Covid-19 pandemic continues to afflict the world, Patrick Berche, former director general of the Institut Pasteur de Lille, was the guest of Europe 1. He publishes a book which reviews the history of pandemics and which shows that we find certain characteristics through the ages.

INTERVIEW

Patrick Berche, former director general of the Institut Pasteur de Lille, publishes with Stanis Perez an imposing book,

Pandemics - From the origins to the Covid-19

to Perrin editions.

They come back to the History of pandemics and show how Man has both learned from his mistakes and repeated others.

A chronology of leprosy in Covid-19 made possible in particular thanks to "a new science which has been emerging for twenty years, which is archeobiology", recalls Patrick Berche.

"We can now, from DNA or nucleic acids, find traces of plague or smallpox from human bones."

Search for scapegoats

We therefore find very old traces of diseases such as tuberculosis, plague or smallpox, also called Antonine plague and which struck the Roman Empire.

"The Roman Empire is the start of globalization, when countries are administratively managed as a single entity. Diseases are circulating at full speed and this is what happened with the Antonine plague," he explains. former director of the Institut Pasteur.

Then in the Middle Ages came two great plagues, the black plague and leprosy, which aroused collective terror and helped to designate scapegoats, be they Jews, lepers and beggars.

A "search for scapegoats that exists in all pandemics, including today", underlines Patrick Berche.

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The impact of travel and the temptation to close borders

From the 16th century, the first globalization of viruses and bacteria took place, which passed from one continent to another through travels and discoveries.

“The discovery of America was a disaster for Native Americans. Europeans, either directly or through the black slave trade, brought smallpox, which Native Americans did not know, measles and a whole range of people. series of diseases. And Christopher Columbus, on his first trip, brought syphilis to Europe, "explains the former director.

From then on and as now, the temptation is great to close the borders in order to protect oneself.

To contain the plague, Voltaire thus recommends the control or the closing of the borders.

"It is a reflex for all contagious diseases. It was not known exactly what the origin was. The germs were only found much later with Pasteur, and therefore the only way to guarantee not to catch the disease was to flee or barricade oneself. So we built walls, as in Provence with a plague wall in 1720, during the plague of Marseilles, which was the last major epidemic in Europe and France. did not know that there were healthy carriers who can quietly cross borders while they are healthy. "

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In 1867, Jules Lemaire discovered that diseases were linked to the presence of microorganisms, then studied by Pasteur.

"From 1878, it is the Pastorian revolution, where he declares to the Academy of medicine that diseases are due to specific germs. It is a major turning point in the history of humanity", relates Patrick Berche.

Animal origin

At the origin of all these diseases, the authors of the work point out that there are most of the time animals.

This is not the case with tuberculosis or cholera, "the two exceptions", but "almost always wild or domestic animals are the cause of our diseases. Whooping cough, for example, comes from cattle, Leprosy probably comes from primates and red squirrels which are contaminated. It has been shown by molecular biology methods. Syphilis also comes from primates and it was transmitted while evolving with living species ", details the former director from the Institut Pasteur de Lille to the microphone of Europe 1.

Prepare for the next pandemic

Finally, we must "prepare" to have "other pandemics", concludes Patrick Berche. "We are roughly 7.2 billion highly urbanized individuals, with air travel of 4.6 billion people in 2019, in contact with animal reservoirs, so we are very vulnerable."