Access

News and Views

Nature 434, 713-715 (7 April 2005) | doi:10.1038/434713a; Published online 6 April 2005

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

Environmental science:  Germ theory for ailing corals

Stephen R. Palumbi1

Top

Human activities damage coral reef ecosystems. Application of the 'germ theory', proposed more than a century ago for human diseases, could foster action on global environmental ailments such as this.

In 1876, Robert Koch was struggling to convince the world that germs cause disease. Today, environmental degradation is a pervasive planetary disease, but the causes remain shrouded in the same popular murk that made diseases mysterious before the work of Koch and Louis Pasteur.

  1. Stephen R. Palumbi is in the Department of Biological Sciences, Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, California 93950, USA.
    e-mail: Email: spalumbi@stanford.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.