More blame human garbage.
Even if it were a disease, there's no evidence that humans introduced it. He made a good case himself for mosquitos as a culprit.
Again, where is the evidence for diseases making species go extinct? To argue this one would have to ignore the capacity for species to develop increased immunity to diseases.
More blame human garbage.
It's not "blame human garbage" if we humans actually did it (hunted certain animals to extinction, that is). I don't see why acknowledgement of the truth has to be avoided simply because it might be misinterpreted by some people with bad political motivations.
Interesting article. Although I don't buy it all, there is reason to think that a human population chasing a food source whose population has been depleted by disease could easily extirpate a species. IOW, why not "All of the Above"?
All sorts of critters came over from Asia with humans. I am certain that not a few bore parasites. Birds would spread them fast (as they did Brucellosis (Lyme's disease) for example). That being true, however, one would think the worldwide distribution would have already been attained.
For the theory to hold, whatever family of pathogens MacPhee suspects must all be terribly lethal, but not lethal to birds or spread by birds, or insects that parasiticize birds (such as ticks and fleas), because they would have already been here. That is a pretty narrow band of possibile carriers but not out of the question (soft-tissue worms for example). One then wonders about the vector or transmission mechanism and how it could have been so efficient and whether looking in bone marrow will yield anything.
Still, an interesting article and a thought provoking and possibly useful hypothesis.