Humans, Other Animals and ‘One Health’ in the Early Twenty-First Century

Cassidy, Angela

and conservation. 3 Schwabe's philosophy of OM was inspired by and expressed in his own career trajectory, which cut across many of these disciplines, as exemplified by his work on the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus, described in Chapter 5. He had first written about bringing 'Veterinary Medicine and Human Health' together during the early 1960s, while working at the (AUB) University of Beirut and consulting on parasitology for the World Health Organization (WHO). However, he elaborated his ideas and first described them using the term OM during the 1980s, following his return to the USA. 4 The other contributors to the 2002 symposium, who included some of Schwabe's many students and collaborators (now senior academics and policy-makers in their own right), discussed the relevance of OM to their own work in areas such as disease surveillance, veterinary public health and epidemiology. 5 The event was particularly timely because Schwabe was becoming a figurehead for a wide network of scientists and health professionals working across human, animal and environmental health. While many of these individuals had been grappling with scientific and policy problems lying at the intersection of these fields for some time, Schwabe's ideas helped them articulate why it was necessary to think in this integrative way. His ideas about OM also provided a key foundation for the later emergence of One Health (OH), a broader reconfiguration of research, policy and clinical practice across human and animal health, which also brought in environmental concerns.