"Everything you wanted to know about coronaviruses but were afraid to ask."
Laura H. Kahn MD, MPH, MPP, author of One Health and the Politics of COVID-19
Using an interdisciplinary One Health approach, Dr. Laura Kahn will draw upon material from her book, One Health and the Politics of Covid-19, to talk about the history, science, research, and politics of coronaviruses. One Health is the concept that human, animal, plant, environmental, and ecosystem health are linked. This is a relatively new term, but an ancient concept recognized by indigenous peoples around the world.
Coronaviruses are zoonotic viruses, meaning that they originate in non-human animals (i.e., bats) and spread to humans. The most well-known coronaviruses are Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Covid-19. Unlike SARS and MERS, which emerged in 2002 and 2012, respectively, Covid-19 appears unusual in some of its clinical manifestations. The gold standard evidence used to prove the natural origins of the earlier coronavirus epidemics is lacking with Covid-19. The origin of this virus remains controversial.
Coronaviruses were first discovered by veterinarians in the early 1930s. Physicians discovered them in the 1960s while studying “the common cold” but assumed that they were merely nuisance microbes. Medical researchers lost interest in them until the shocking appearance of SARS. Gain-of-function research of pandemic potential pathogens, such as SARS, and the possibility that it might have led to Covid-19, raises concerns about the ethics and risks of this type of research.
Dr. Laura H. Kahn is a physician, policy researcher, educator, and author. For almost 20 years, she was a research scholar in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Her education and training encompass nursing, medicine, public health, and public policy.
A native of California, Dr. Kahn holds a bachelor's degree in nursing from UC Los Angeles, a doctorate in medicine from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, a master's degree in public health from Columbia University and a master's degree in public policy from Princeton University. Dr. Kahn is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. In 2007, the New Jersey Chapter of the American College of Physicians awarded her with their highest honor, the Laureate Award. In 2014, the American Association of Public Health Physicians awarded her with a Presidential Award for Meritorious Service, and in 2016, the American Veterinary Epidemiology Society (AVES) awarded her with their highest honor for her work in One Health: the K.F. Meyer-James H. Steele Gold Head Cane Award.
