“We have a lot to learn from these people,” Barry Hewlett told me, one day in Gabon, “as to how they’ve responded to these epidemics over time.” Modern society has lost that sort of ancient, painfully acquired accumulation of cultural knowledge, he said. Instead we depend on the disease scientists. Molecular biology and epidemiology are useful, but other traditions of knowledge are useful too. “Let’s listen to what people are saying here. Let’s find out what’s going on. They’ve been living with epidemics for a long time.”
