The diversity of infectious disease threats currently facing humanity is unprecedented. The
introduction of potent antimicrobial agents and vaccines into modern medicine's arsenal in
the last century inspired an overly optimistic prediction of our ability to control or even
eradicate specific infectious diseases. This perspective has now been tempered by the
realization that new infectious disease threats continue to appear and old diseases continue
to adapt. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately one third (ie …