Then, this morning I chanced upon another article in the current issue of Time about a virus (Filovirus) that, it is alleged, might be an attempt by the Earth's ecosystem to fight back at the assault of humankind. Both articles, taken together, clicked in a way that singularly encountered they might have not... so have decided to pass them along.

I am a superstitious man, believe in magic, and, as was graphically evidenced when the first men went into space -thereby able to look down upon our planet- believe that the Earth is an entity, living, breathing, and perhaps, calculating.

The First Nations/First Peoples are firmly bound to the Earth and accordingly are well aware of the ecological state of affairs. And so, I wonder...AIDS, Hantavirus, Filovirus...could these be some sort of sign, a tremor, a ripple from deep within Mother Earth?

As per the Spiritual Elders, Hotevilla, Hopi Nation:

We are now living in the fourth and final world of the Hopi. We are at a most critical time in human history. It is a crossroads at which the outcome of our actions will decide the fate of life on earth.

"Calling something a canary in a coal mine is one of journalism's most hackneyed comparisons, yet it is a remarkably apt description of the distressing plight of the world's birds and fish. Sensitive indicators of the integrity of the Earth's ecosystems, both piscine and avian neighbors are at a terrible crossroads. We ignore what their reduced and sickened numbers are trying to tell us at our own peril.

"Birds may be more obviously in trouble, in part because their habitat is more vulnerable to human encroachment. Some 70 percent of the world's 9,600 bird species are declining, according to Howard Youth, writing in World Watch (Jan./Feb. 1994), and 1,000 of those species are threatened with extinction in the near future.

"The direct losses are alarming enough in themselves-and doubly so when you consider that birds keep animal pests such as insects and rodents in check and also are essential to the vitality of many plants.

"And to those who don't care about animals other than themselves, Youth has this to say: 'Birds are particularly good indicators of the health of other species-and of whole ecosystems.' In other words, birds may be showing us that human lives could ultimately be at stake.

"Birds are dying off for a number of reasons, reports Youth. The most obvious is loss of habitat-rain, temperature, and boreal forests, grasslands, plains, wetlands-to development and farmland. (North America's 10 most common duck species alone have experienced a precipitous 30 percent decline in 40 years.)

"To habitat loss add ingestion of pesticides; poisoning by mercury, selenium, and lead; oil spills; acid rain; and the introduction of alien species like snakes and cats to ecologically fragile places.

"Nature reserves help somewhat, says Youth, but bird and wildlife sanctuaries make up less than 5 percent of the world's land and some of them, especially in the Third World, are protected habitats in name alone. Because so many birds are migrants or live year-round in the tropics, say Youth, 'global efforts to organize bird-saving projects will only succeed...if there is a strong local interest in the vulnerable tropics.'

"With more than half the world's people living within 100 kilometers of a coast, coastal habitat loss has become a huge problem for fish, E Magazine reports. Many cities have degraded their coastal habitats through development; San Francisco Bay, for example, has shrunk 60 percent in 140 years because of land reclamation; it is now overrun by alien species and can no longer support commercial fishing. Chesapeake Bay, once one of the most productive fishing grounds, saw its annual oyster catch fall from 20,000 tons in the late '50s to 3,000 tons in the late '80s, largely because of pollution. Meanwhile, 5 to 10 percent of the world's coral reefs have been reduced by pollution and destruction; 60 percent of what's left is threatened in the next 20 to 40 years.

"Perhaps more troubling than overfishing, which can be controlled, is sickness and contamination among the fish that remain. Since 1964, reports Lisa Lefferts in E Magazine (Jan./Feb. 1993), liver cancer has been found in 15 species from 50 polluted sites in the United States, and many other fish, especially those in the Great Lakes, are contaminated with PCBs and methyl mercury.

"Although the EPA doesn't believe the cancer risk for fish injesters to be very great, the Environmental Defense Fund disagrees, saying the EPA's consumption estimates were based on surveys done before fish became as popular a food as today.

"Pollutants that cause reproductive and developmental failure are also responsible for some of the dwindling of the fish population. In addition, animals that eat tainted fish can themselves be affected, accelerating the the loss of wildlife such as birds and mink. Indeed, according to the World Wildlife Fund's Theo Colborn, quoted in E Magazine, 'all top predator species dependent on fish from the Great Lakes are suffering reproductive problems.'

But, what if the ecosystem recognizes it's enemy and starts to assert itself in ways from which humankind can neither retreat nor cope?

Huichol Proverb:

When the world ends, it will be like when the names of things are changed during the peyote hunt. All will be different, the opposite of what it is now. Now there are two eyes in the heavens, Dios Sol and Dios Fuego. Then, the moon will open his eye and become brighter. The sun will become dimmer. There will be no more differences. No more men and women. No child and no adult. All will change places...

"The accident must have come as a horrifying shock, even to an experienced scientist. One minute, a sample was spinning in a high-speed centrifuge. Then, suddenly, the container cracked, and the sample-tissue contaminated by a rare, potentially lethal virus-splattered the inside of the centrifuge. Fortunately, the Yale researcher working with the deadly germs was wearing a lab gown, latex gloves and a mask, as required under federal guidelines...he didn't bother to report the accident [after following all other safety procedures]...and a few days later he left town to visit an old friend in Boston.

"Bad move. Although he would not realize it for about a week, the scientist...had been infected with the mysterious Brazilian Sabia virus....

"...Sabia is almost certainly carried by rodents and is not contagious by casual contact (the afflicted scientist evidently got it from tiny bits of tissue that flew into his unprotected eyes or nose or both).

"Sabia and several other related viruses-Junin, Machupo and Guanarito in South America and Lassa in Africa, all members of arenavirus family-are particularly frightening because they can kill in such a grisly way. Characteristic symptoms are high fever, uncontrolled bleeding in virtually every organ and finally shock. The liver turns yellow and decomposes. Blood can leak from literally every bodily orifice, including the eyes and pores of the skin.

"Sabia was never seen before 1990.

"Several days after a victim contracts the virus, his eyes turn red and his head begins to ache. Red spots appear on his skin and, spreading quickly, become a rash of tiny blisters, and then the skin rips. Blood begins to flow from every one of the body's orifices. The victim coughs up black vomit, sloughing off parts of his tongue, throat and windpipe. His organs fill with blood and fail. He suffers seizures, splattering virus-saturated blood that can infect anyone nearby. Within a few days the victim dies, and as the virus destroys his remaining cells, much of his tissue actually liquefies...no movie will match the real-life terror described in Richard Preston's -The Hot Zone (Random House, $23)...soon in stores later this month...

"Writing with great flair, Preston introduces his readers to the terrors of the FILOVIRUS, a family of threadlike viruses found in the rain-forest regions of Central Africa. He describes a 1976 outbreak that spread through villages near the Ebola River in Zaire, killing as many as 90% of those infected. This so-called Ebola Zaire virus is the deadliest of the filoviruses, but its Ebola Sudan and Marburg kin, while not as deadly, cause equally horrible symptoms.

"Such dangerous viruses may seem a distant menace, but as [the] Yale researcher learned last week, accidents can happen. The Hot Zone details a 1989 Ebola crisis that occurred not in the forests of Africa but in Reston, Virginia, only 15 miles from Washington. It all started at the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit, run by a company that imports and sells monkeys for use in research laboratories. When an unusual number of deaths were recorded among a shipment of monkeys that had recently arrived from the Philippines, tissue samples were sent to a U.S. Army research center.

"There a technician identified the strands as either Ebola Zaire or something very close to it. Even more alarming, an incident at the Reston building seemed to confirm that this virus, unlike the African one, could be transmitted through the air. Frantic phone calls were made to Virginia health authorities and to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The Reston building was, in Army parlance, a 'hot zone,' an area that contained lethal, infectious organisms. An Army team, wearing space suits, killed the 450 surviving monkeys by lethal injection, and the cadavers were placed in plastic bags for safe disposal. Before the building was boarded up, the Army sterilized every square inch of the interior...Eventually it became apparent that the Ebola Zaire strain at Reston was harmless to humans. Yet the virus is considered to be a continuing menace. 'A tiny change in its genetic code,' Preston writes, 'and it might zoom through the human race.'

"In his [Preston's] view the worst is yet to come. As the world's population continues to grow, he writes, and human settlements and activies intrude farther into the rain forests, previously unknown viruses like HIV, Lassa, the filovirus and others are emerging to wreak their toll. In a rather mystical but ominous conclusion, Preston warns that 'the rain forest has its own defenses...The earths's immune system, so to speak, is starting to kick in...The earth is attempting to rid itself of an infection by the human parasite. Perhaps AIDS is the first step in a natural process of clearance.'"