In Biblical times, where historical accounts and historical myth sometimes mingle, there are accounts of great armies being destroyed by disease. Conflicting accounts of the siege of Jerusalem circa 701 BCE by the Assyrian king Sennacherib are of that nature.
Fast forward two thousand years. Evans, Kleinman, and Pagano write:
In 1334 an epidemic struck the northeastern Chinese province of Hopei. This “Black Death” claimed up to 90% of the population, nearly five million people. The epidemic eventually reached and decimated Tartar forces that had been attacking Kaffa, a Genoese colony on the Crimean Peninsula. In 1347, the departing Tartars catapulted plagueinfested bodies into Kaffa. The Genoese quickly dumped these bodies into the sea, however it was too late. Four ships escaped back to Italy carrying the plague that in just two years killed one-third of the European population.
The relationship between disease and national defense is not a new one in the US. Just a simple web search revealed this 72-year-old article from the American Journal of Public Health on the dangers of venereal disease to military preparedness. Another article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) of the same year reports that venereal disease has been a concern of the US Army and Navy since 1778.
There is continued concern about the impact of infectious disease on national defense, for example, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and the threat from tick-borne diseases, and from influenza.
Indeed, with anthrax and ricin scares, preventing and managing bio-terrorism is a major part of contemporary national preparedness.
In addition, the Department of Defense is participating in prevention initiatives. As Dr. Jonathan Woodson, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs in the Department of Defense, put it:
At the Department of Defense, we’ve moved from a concept of health care to health, meaning that we understand health really is a much more involved concept other than just freedom from disease. It relates to healthy communities and healthy and active lifestyles and also addresses mental wellness and spiritual wellness as well. For us to create a fit and ready force, we need to make sure that we’re paying attention to all these dimensions of health and wellness.
All of these efforts center upon a single premise: national defense depends upon maintaining the health of the civilian and military populations.
That raises an important question: does it matter whether the threat to our health is a foreign enemy, a small band of domestic terrorists, or what we do to ourselves?
As we eat too much, as we eat too much of the wrong foods, as those foods provide biological encouragement to continue those habits, as we exercise too little, and as we create our own national health epidemic, is that not more than what any adversary could do to us?
Or as Walt Kelly’s cartoon Pogo once famously stated: We is met the enemy, and he is us.
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