Lecture today will look at the role of fear and fantasy in fuelling epidemics

Professor Philip Alcabes of Hunter College in New York City, will discuss his book Dread: How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu at the upcoming Graduate Research Association of Students in Public Health (GRASP) speaker series at York.

A professor in the Hunter College School of Health Sciences’ Urban Public Health Program, Alcabes will give his talk today, from 10 to 11:30am at the Paul A. Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune College, Keele campus.

Alcabes is an infectious disease epidemiologist with over 20 years of experience researching the social aspects of AIDS, as well as tuberculosis and other communicable epidemic diseases. In his recent research, he has turned to the history of contagion control and the social construction of epidemics.

He is a visiting clinical professor at the Yale University School of Nursing and a member of Hunter College’s Human Subjects Research Committee and Council on Honors. In addition, he is a member of the Internal Advisory Board of the Hunter College Center on AIDS, Drugs & Community Health, as well as the Scientific Advisory Committee to the World Trade Center Health Registry Project of the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.

Alcabes has authored or co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed research articles in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet and more.

For more information, visit the GRASP Web site.