GILLESPIE LAB in the MEDIA
Professor Tom Gillespie with BBC World News: Saving species and preventing pandemics.
Gillespie Lab works to advance a more comprehensive perspective of anthropogenic change and pathogen exchange through a combination of physical and social sciences. By communicating our research and our findings with a broader audience, we hope to encourage more awareness of the diverse ecosystems that surround us all.
"Thomas Gillespie, a disease ecologist at Emory, says changing how humans interact with animals and the natural world could change the course of future pandemics."
"Professor Thomas Gillespie studies emerging infectious diseases, the types we don’t even have a name for yet. His work has shown the problems of land-use change for mining and agriculture and the emergence of diseases that jump from animals to humans, like Covid-19. The more we cut down, the closer we get to diseases we’d never encountered before. We also hear about global solutions from World Service environment correspondent Navin Singh Kadhka, and how we can help in the fight to save the rainforests."
"Some scientists believe they’re becoming increasingly common and that the primary driver is likely food and farming. So how have zoonotic diseases been dealt with in the past and can we learn any valuable lessons about our food chain there? Graihagh Jackson travels to Malaysia to uncover the story of Nipah virus that first emerged in 1999, killing up to 75% of those it infected. We hear how the virus emerged, how it changed the community there forever and how it was eventually curbed. Could the story of Nipah virus hold the key to how we protect ourselves from future pandemics like COVID-19?"
"In this episode, disease ecologist Dr Thomas Gillespie, of Emory University, talks to Libby Peake about the relationship between the emergence of new pathogens and human induced environmental change."
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“The same types of things that can protect wild animals that are susceptible to Covid can also protect them from other human pathogens,” said Thomas Gillespie, a disease ecologist at Emory University who frequently works with wild primates.
"But there is also the risk of spillback. A pathogen that has already spread in humans and that can infect a broad range of hosts can enter wild populations of animals, mutate in them and create variants of a virus that could then potentially spill back to people and escape vaccines and treatments, says Thomas Gillespie, who studies disease ecology at Emory University."
"Associate professor of environmental sciences Thomas Gillespie — an expert on zoonotic diseases recognized for his integrative approach to the conservation of biodiversity and mitigation of emerging infectious diseases."
"Tom Gillespie, an ecologist based at Emory University in Atlanta, co-directs the ecosystem-health project at Gombe National Park, Tanzania, where Jane Goodall did her field studies...to prevent any upsurge in poaching, (Dr. Leendertz) and Dr. Gillespie have helped organize international bridge funding for communities dependent on ape-focused ecotourism and research."
"The majority of global forest loss is caused by just four commodities: beef, soy, palm oil, and wood products. That’s why it’s important that the demand and incentives for these products be addressed, says Thomas Gillespie, a professor at Emory University, U.S., and the lead author of the letter to the editor."
"Tropical rainforests are exceptionally important in this regard,” says Tom Gillespie, who leads a lab studying pathogens and environmental change at Emory University. “Here you have a diversity of bats, rodents, primates — the species where we are most likely to contract something — [so] you are going to have a diversity of pathogens as well.”
