We have met the enemy and he is ours We bought him at a pet shop. When monkey-pox, a disease usually found in the African rain forest suddenly turns up in children in the American .Midwest it's hard not to wonder of the disease that comes from foreign animals is homing in on human beings. "Most of the infections  we think of as human infections started in other animals " says Stephen Morse director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness at Columbia University. It's not just that we're going to where the animals are; we're also bringing them closer to us Popular foreign pets have brought a whole new disease to this country A strange illness killed Isaksen's pets and she now thinks that keeping foreign pets is a bad idea "I don't think it's fair to have them as pets when we have such a limited knowledge of them "says Isaksen "Laws allowing these animals to be brought in from deep forest areas without stricter control need changing "says Peter Schantz Monkey-pox may be the wake-up call. Researchers believe infected animals may infect their owners. We know very little about these new diseases A new bug may be kind at first. But it may develop into something harmful Monkey-pox doesn't look a major infectious disease But is not impossible to pass the disease from person to person Why did Isaksen advise people not to have foreign pets?
They attack human beings We need to study native animals They can't live out of the rain forest We do not know much about them yet