One cannot but be reminded of James Lovelock’s Gaia while reading your main leader and briefing about the threat of a new flu pandemic (“The Pandemic Threat” and “Watching Nervously,” May 2, 2009). He conceives of the bulging human species as a pandemic that afflicts the earth’s homeostasis, which disease he calls polyanthroponemia or human overpopulation. Malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, and influenza among other vicious diseases can thus be thought of as parts of Gaia’s revenge, which includes global warming, as well. Conceived thus, pandemics are liable to become an ever-greater threat if for no other reason than because the human population keeps growing, too. From Gaia’s perspective, everything goes when it comes to human overpopulation, the most vicious disease of them all.