religion

Someday, Year

Proposal

Infectious Disease: Avian Influenza (H5N1; bird flu)

1) How this phenomenon is complex and requires IDST?

Repko states that “interdisciplinary studies is a cognitive process by which individuals or groups draw on disciplinary perspectives and integrate their insights and modes of thinking to advance their understanding of a complex problem…” (Repko, 2014, pg. 28). The phenomenon of the bird flu disease takes multiple insights to explain why many people believe that this could one day happen affect the population. This phenomenon is complex because it can spread so easily and the prognosis of survival and death are not certain. This deals with many disciplines that come together to try to explain how the flu started and how it spread. It also deals with disciplines that try to understand how to treat the epidemic. This phenomenon requires IDST because you cannot explain, understand, or solve it without the help of other disciplines.

2) How this phenomenon constitutes an appropriate choice for this course?

Avian Influenza is the disease caused by infection with avian-bird, and influenza-flu, Type A viruses. This virus can occur naturally among wild aquatic birds worldwide and can infect poultry and other birds or animals. This disease can infect humans and could possibly be one type of disease that could wipe out the population. This phenomenon constitutes an appropriate choice for this course because it is all about ideas of the ends of the world. This disease is liable to affect our population again and have a larger impact than before. Any disease could have an outbreak and devastate the world, but this disease is a realistic infection that could one day happen again and scare the population.

3) Which two or three specific disciplines will be employed by the student in the research with rationale for these choices?

Geography, health sciences, and biology will help to explain the phenomenon of avian influenza. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention will also help to explain this phenomenon. The geographic extent of the avian influenza epidemic is unprecedented. Southern China is considered to be the epicenter, but it continues to spread northwards and westwards. Health sciences can communicate and show how we can catch this disease because we are restricted by a poor fit of these viruses to cellular receptors and extracellular inhibitors in our respiratory tract. Biology can explain how birds and animals can catch flu’s just like humans and explain how the flu can spread and infect us. The flu’s that deal with birds, and domestic poultry are worse than the ones that humans deal with.