Over the years, this list of diseases has been expanded to include AIDS and now SARS.
SARS was officially added to the list of diseases requiring mandatory quarantines only on April 14, six days later.
The European Union suggested on Thursday that the draft agreement would expand the list of diseases to at least 22 diseases.
The list of diseases (and disease vectors) that could potentially be affected by climate change is a long and various one.
The fear is that in a short time SARS could become another on the long list of diseases that are a fixture in many areas.
This leads to a customized list of diseases one can get as, say, a middle-age transsexual who sleeps with both men and women.
Even though there is no scientific evidence that the dust caused cancer, the government added cancer to the list of diseases that would be compensated.
President Bush added SARS last week to the list of diseases for which people can be quarantined in the United States, but did not lay out the mechanics of how this might be done.
Just two weeks ago, President Bush added SARS to the list of diseases that federal officials may use to stop an immigrant at a frontier or, under powers to regulate interstate commerce, a citizen at a state border.
Mr. Shinseki's decision is a victory for groups like Vietnam Veterans of America, which has been pushing the department to add Parkinson's disease, ischemic heart conditions and hypertension to the list of diseases presumptively linked to Agent Orange.
The list of diseases and their insect vectors also includes typhus and body lice, plague and rat fleas, African sleeping sickness and tsetse flies, and various fevers and ticks, among innumerable others.
