Spillover David Quammen Epub To Mobi - DOWNLOAD 0fea0b1dc0 Download.or.read.online.books.in.PDF.EPUB.and.Mobi.Format.Click.Download.or.Read.Online. Ebola, SARS, Hendra, AIDS, and countless other deadly viruses all have one thing in common: the bugs that transmit these diseases all originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. In this gripping account, David Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these.
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A Booklist Top 10 Science Book of 2012, a 2012 New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and a Daily Beast 'Top 11 Book of 2012'
A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.
The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia―but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world. He recounts adventures in the field―netting bats in China, trapping monkeys in Bangladesh, stalking gorillas in the Congo―with the world’s leading disease scientists. In Spillover Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge, and he asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.
- Sales Rank: #138030 in Books
- Published on: 2012-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50' h x 1.60' w x 6.60' l, 2.08 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 592 pages
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Exemplary science writer Quammen schools us in the fascinating if alarming facts about zoonotic diseases, animal infections that sicken humans, such as rabies, Ebola, influenza, and West Nile. Zoonoses can escalate rapidly into global pandemics when human-to-human transmission occurs, and Quammen wants us to understand disease dynamics and exactly what’s at stake. Drawing on the truly dramatic history of virology, he profiles brave and stubborn viral sleuths and recounts his own hair-raising field adventures, including helping capture large fruit bats in Bangladesh. Along the way, Quammen explains how devilishly difficult it is to trace the origins of a zoonosis and explicates the hidden process by which pathogens spill over from their respective reservoir hosts (water fowl, mosquitoes, pigs, bats, monkeys) and infect humans. We contract Lyme disease after it’s spread by black-legged ticks and white-footed mice, not white-tailed deer as commonly believed. The SARS epidemic involves China’s wild flavor trend and the eating of civets. Quammen’s revelatory, far-reaching investigation into AIDS begins in 1908 with a bloody encounter between a hunter and a chimpanzee in Cameroon. Zoonotic diseases are now on the rise due to our increasing population, deforestation, fragmented ecosystems, and factory farming. Quammen spent six years on this vital, in-depth tour de force in the hope that knowledge will engender preparedness. An essential work. --Donna Seaman
*Starred Review* Exemplary science writer Quammen schools us in the fascinating if alarming facts about zoonotic diseases, animal infections that sicken humans, such as rabies, Ebola, influenza, and West Nile. Zoonoses can escalate rapidly into global pandemics when human-to-human transmission occurs, and Quammen wants us to understand disease dynamics and exactly what’s at stake. Drawing on the truly dramatic history of virology, he profiles brave and stubborn viral sleuths and recounts his own hair-raising field adventures, including helping capture large fruit bats in Bangladesh. Along the way, Quammen explains how devilishly difficult it is to trace the origins of a zoonosis and explicates the hidden process by which pathogens spill over from their respective reservoir hosts (water fowl, mosquitoes, pigs, bats, monkeys) and infect humans. We contract Lyme disease after it’s spread by black-legged ticks and white-footed mice, not white-tailed deer as commonly believed. The SARS epidemic involves China’s wild flavor trend and the eating of civets. Quammen’s revelatory, far-reaching investigation into AIDS begins in 1908 with a bloody encounter between a hunter and a chimpanzee in Cameroon. Zoonotic diseases are now on the rise due to our increasing population, deforestation, fragmented ecosystems, and factory farming. Quammen spent six years on this vital, in-depth tour de force in the hope that knowledge will engender preparedness. An essential work. --Donna Seaman
Review
“Starred review. ...a frightening but critically important book for anyone interested in learning about the prospects of the world’s next major pandemic.” (Publishers Weekly)
“David Quammen might be my favorite living science writer: amiable, erudite, understated, incredibly funny, profoundly humane. The best of his books, The Song of the Dodo, renders the relatively arcane field of island biogeography as gripping as a thriller. That bodes well for his new book, whose subject really is thriller-worthy: how deadly diseases (AIDS, SARS, Ebola) make the leap from animals to humans, and how, where, and when the next pandemic might emerge.” (Kathryn Schulz - New York Magazine)
“That [Quammen] hasn’t won a nonfiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment.” (Dwight Garner - The New York Times)
“David Quammen [is] one of that rare breed of science journalists who blend exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling.” (Nathan Wolfe - Nature)
“Starred review. A wonderful, eye-opening account of humans versus disease.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Starred review. An essential work.” (Booklist)
“[Spillover is] David Quammen’s absorbing, lively and, yes, occasionally gory trek through the animal origins of emerging human diseases.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
“As page turning as Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone… [Quammen is] one of the best science writers.” (Seattle Times)
“[Spillover] delivers news from the front lines of public health. It makes clear that animal diseases are inseparable from us because we are inseparable from the natural world.” (Philadelphia Tribune)
“Starred review. ...a frightening but critically important book for anyone interested in learning about the prospects of the world’s next major pandemic.” (Publishers Weekly)
“David Quammen might be my favorite living science writer: amiable, erudite, understated, incredibly funny, profoundly humane. The best of his books, The Song of the Dodo, renders the relatively arcane field of island biogeography as gripping as a thriller. That bodes well for his new book, whose subject really is thriller-worthy: how deadly diseases (AIDS, SARS, Ebola) make the leap from animals to humans, and how, where, and when the next pandemic might emerge.” (Kathryn Schulz - New York Magazine)
“That [Quammen] hasn’t won a nonfiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment.” (Dwight Garner - The New York Times)
“David Quammen [is] one of that rare breed of science journalists who blend exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling.” (Nathan Wolfe - Nature)
“Starred review. A wonderful, eye-opening account of humans versus disease.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Starred review. An essential work.” (Booklist)
“[Spillover is] David Quammen’s absorbing, lively and, yes, occasionally gory trek through the animal origins of emerging human diseases.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
“As page turning as Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone… [Quammen is] one of the best science writers.” (Seattle Times)
“[Spillover] delivers news from the front lines of public health. It makes clear that animal diseases are inseparable from us because we are inseparable from the natural world.” (Philadelphia Tribune)
About the Author
David Quammen is the author of The Song of the Dodo, among other books. He has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is the recipient of a John Burroughs Medal and the National Magazine Award. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.
David Quammen is the author of The Song of the Dodo, among other books. He has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is the recipient of a John Burroughs Medal and the National Magazine Award. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.
Most helpful customer reviews
171 of 178 people found the following review helpful.
Gripping stories with good science
By Rachael Ludwick
The jargon of diseases can be boring, tedious. There are a lot of acronyms and big words. Worse, we often don't know as much as we'd like -- and usually we aren't very certain of what we do know. Telling a good story given those constraints is hard. But Spillover repeatedly provides gripping stories that still impart a good understanding of what we know about zoonotic (animal-origin) diseases. Even better, the author ties disparate stories together to describe some general trend and possible causes for seemingly new infectious diseases. But I don't want to summarize the conclusions: I want you to go read it. You won't be bored and you'll learn a lot (most definitely even if you've read books like The Hot Zone or the Coming Plague).
Some other notes:
* The author has a less human-centric attitude and a lot of sympathy for the animals, like horses or apes, who sometimes are actually the first animal a disease spills over into only to later infect humans.
* He has a wry tone. When noting the euthanasia of a large number of monkeys (even ones likely not infected with a disease), he notes no humans were euthanized despite equal exposure.
* He provides full references. Some of those papers are quite readable by a non-expert such as this review ([...]) of the importance of bats as reservoirs for infectious diseases.
* The stories are often told from the perspective of the scientists trying to figure out what the heck is really going on. The author is also not afraid to explain when scientists just don't know -- and how they might figure it out more.
* The author went on several field collections where he might have been exposed to a disease being investigated.
If I had any criticisms I would have two:
* The author notes the problem of calling African hunted wild meat 'bush meat' which has unsavory connotations to many Europeans and Americans despite Europeans and Americans also hunting wild animals for food. And then he still calls it that repeatedly for the rest of the book (hunted animals are a major source for new infections). I realize this makes it easier to read but it was a bit jarring.
* There is a long, imagined story in the chapters on the origin HIV that is, essentially, imagined entirely with details about a possible river fisherman who gets infected with HIV early on and brings it downstream to the (then) Belgian capitol of the Congo. Elsewhere in the book when the explanation for the origin of a disease required some imagination to fill in a plausible sequence of events, the imaginary stories were a lot less elaborate. I don't think the story detracts from the accuracy of the book: something like that had to have happened to explain the origin of HIV (specifically HIV-1). I was also perfectly entertained and learned a bit about the cultures in the region, but it stood out. It might annoy some so I note you can safely skip ahead when you hit it.
I call these two things out, but even so the book is still excellent. I have some interesting papers I want to read. I also feel I know more about how infectious diseases 'work'. Best of all, I am less fearful of them as well.
Gripping stories with good science
By Rachael Ludwick
The jargon of diseases can be boring, tedious. There are a lot of acronyms and big words. Worse, we often don't know as much as we'd like -- and usually we aren't very certain of what we do know. Telling a good story given those constraints is hard. But Spillover repeatedly provides gripping stories that still impart a good understanding of what we know about zoonotic (animal-origin) diseases. Even better, the author ties disparate stories together to describe some general trend and possible causes for seemingly new infectious diseases. But I don't want to summarize the conclusions: I want you to go read it. You won't be bored and you'll learn a lot (most definitely even if you've read books like The Hot Zone or the Coming Plague).
Some other notes:
* The author has a less human-centric attitude and a lot of sympathy for the animals, like horses or apes, who sometimes are actually the first animal a disease spills over into only to later infect humans.
* He has a wry tone. When noting the euthanasia of a large number of monkeys (even ones likely not infected with a disease), he notes no humans were euthanized despite equal exposure.
* He provides full references. Some of those papers are quite readable by a non-expert such as this review ([...]) of the importance of bats as reservoirs for infectious diseases.
* The stories are often told from the perspective of the scientists trying to figure out what the heck is really going on. The author is also not afraid to explain when scientists just don't know -- and how they might figure it out more.
* The author went on several field collections where he might have been exposed to a disease being investigated.
If I had any criticisms I would have two:
* The author notes the problem of calling African hunted wild meat 'bush meat' which has unsavory connotations to many Europeans and Americans despite Europeans and Americans also hunting wild animals for food. And then he still calls it that repeatedly for the rest of the book (hunted animals are a major source for new infections). I realize this makes it easier to read but it was a bit jarring.
* There is a long, imagined story in the chapters on the origin HIV that is, essentially, imagined entirely with details about a possible river fisherman who gets infected with HIV early on and brings it downstream to the (then) Belgian capitol of the Congo. Elsewhere in the book when the explanation for the origin of a disease required some imagination to fill in a plausible sequence of events, the imaginary stories were a lot less elaborate. I don't think the story detracts from the accuracy of the book: something like that had to have happened to explain the origin of HIV (specifically HIV-1). I was also perfectly entertained and learned a bit about the cultures in the region, but it stood out. It might annoy some so I note you can safely skip ahead when you hit it.
I call these two things out, but even so the book is still excellent. I have some interesting papers I want to read. I also feel I know more about how infectious diseases 'work'. Best of all, I am less fearful of them as well.
72 of 75 people found the following review helpful.
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
By Thomas Jones
I have a science background but not in the biological sciences. Over the years I have followed much of the discussions about HIV/AIDS, SARS, and other outbreaks of infectious diseases in the popular press without being able to put it all together. This book provides that overall view and a status report on our efforts to deal with this ongoing threat. In a few spots there may be more technical information than many may want but it is presented in a way that allows one to move past it without losing the thread of the discussion. The book provides a description of the work done by the professionals on the front line and challenges they face. This is an important subject that we all should all be aware of. The book is well worth reading.
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
By Thomas Jones
I have a science background but not in the biological sciences. Over the years I have followed much of the discussions about HIV/AIDS, SARS, and other outbreaks of infectious diseases in the popular press without being able to put it all together. This book provides that overall view and a status report on our efforts to deal with this ongoing threat. In a few spots there may be more technical information than many may want but it is presented in a way that allows one to move past it without losing the thread of the discussion. The book provides a description of the work done by the professionals on the front line and challenges they face. This is an important subject that we all should all be aware of. The book is well worth reading.
36 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent, Vital, Gripping Book
By Yarrow
I can't recommend this book highly enough. Quammen's writing is vivid yet measured, detailed yet gripping, and he possesses true talent as a narrative non-fiction writer. His ability to explain complex scientific ideas and processes in layman's terms is fantastic, and made this book such a joy to read. Though pandemic disease is often written about in ways that are hysterical and melodramatic, SPILLOVER is not a fear-mongering book.
I also deeply appreciated Quammen's awareness of the animals involved, and his respect and empathy for them. It's subtle but ever-present in his choice of language describing them.
I hope this book is assigned in high schools-- it was so inspiring it made me wish I could do my undergraduate schooling over again and become a scientist.
See all 467 customer reviews...Excellent, Vital, Gripping Book
By Yarrow
I can't recommend this book highly enough. Quammen's writing is vivid yet measured, detailed yet gripping, and he possesses true talent as a narrative non-fiction writer. His ability to explain complex scientific ideas and processes in layman's terms is fantastic, and made this book such a joy to read. Though pandemic disease is often written about in ways that are hysterical and melodramatic, SPILLOVER is not a fear-mongering book.
I also deeply appreciated Quammen's awareness of the animals involved, and his respect and empathy for them. It's subtle but ever-present in his choice of language describing them.
I hope this book is assigned in high schools-- it was so inspiring it made me wish I could do my undergraduate schooling over again and become a scientist.
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Published online 2013 Mar 12.
David Quammen
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.
2012. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York. ISBN: (Hardcover) 978-0393066807. US $28.95. 592 p.
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.
2012. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York. ISBN: (Hardcover) 978-0393066807. US $28.95. 592 p.
With evolution to provide the fuel and chance to provide the spark, infections can burstthrough barriers, ravaging habitats like wildfire. When we cannot control the variables,our own habitat could be the next microbial target. Reporting from the epicenters ofmicrobial infection in his new book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the NextHuman Pandemic, award-winning writer David Quammen examines one of nature’sgrim promises: disease will jump from animal to human.
Spillover includes adventure, action, and mystery. Mr. Quammen journeysacross the globe to track down the origins of human epidemics and pandemics. Heconsistently demonstrates that Ebola, SARS, and HIV/AIDS, among others, are the resultsof microbes jumping from animals to humans, zoonotic spillovers of sorts. Mr. Quammenquestions the causes of these spillover events, ultimately concluding that we humans maybe the very ones providing the sparks, and then turning around and crying fire.
Mr. Quammen’s journey is for everyone to take. Though a man of literature by training(Yale ’70, Oxford ’73), he displays qualities that make for an incisive scientist. Mr.Quammen is eagerly observant and relentlessly inquisitive. His language is accessibleand inviting and builds a bridge between stuffy science and the public at large. Mr.Quammen makes the writing appropriate for anyone who may be curious about science. Yourmother-in-law will learn something, as will your physician.
However, after reading Spillover, one cannot help but question Mr.Quammen’s concerns. Even if we suffer the next zoonotic pandemic, how can we comparethat to concerns like cancer and cardiovascular disease? While an exotic monkey virus,though intriguing, might kill 1,500 in a secluded village, the daily toll of cancer inthe United States is the same. Moreover, a reader looking for the fast facts might findthe storytelling to be laborious. It can be hard to appreciate every last detail Mr.Quammen has fit into this sizeable package of adventure and science.
To highlight the medical aspect of his book and address these concerns, Mr. Quammenagreed to an interview with me. The following is a transcription of thatconversation.
Abdul-Kareem Ahmed: What prompted you to tackle the subject of zoonoticdiseases? Was it always a fancy, or did something trigger this 6-year adventure?
David Quammen: It’s been 12 years since I started thinking about it. I hadread a bit about Ebola and was fascinated by it, just for its gruesomeness and itsdrama, as a lot of people were.
I was sitting at a campfire in Central Africa in the middle of a forest with a couple oflocal guys. This was back in July of 2000. I was part of a cross-Congo trek, and theseguys were part of the forest crew.
They started telling me the story about when Ebola had struck their village and waskilling their friends and loved ones. The people didn’t know at the time that it was avirus. One of these fellows mentioned to me that at the same time, nearby in the forest,he and his friend had seen a pile of 13 dead gorillas. He didn’t put that into context,he just mentioned it. But I knew about his village from the medical literature. I knewthat the (Ebola) outbreak had been brought there in the carcass of a chimpanzee that hadbeen found dead in the forest. I knew that gorillas as well as chimps and humans aresusceptible to Ebola.
So when he mentioned from firsthand experience he had witnessed 13 dead gorillas nearbyin the forest, it connected these different parts for me. It connected humans with otherapes and with this virus.
That was when I decided that I wanted to write a book about this. I generally havewritten about ecology and evolutionary biology. I have no training and little experiencein writing about molecular biology or microbiology or cell biology. It was new terrainfor me. The part that I felt comfortable with, and that I felt most interested in, wasthe ecology and evolutionary biology of infectious diseases, in particular, of emergingviruses.
AA: Throughout the book you give a firsthand account of these diseases. Youactually go to these sites on the ground. Weren’t you concerned for your safety?
DQ: The more I learned about this subject and about these diseases, the moremy irrational fears turned into rational concerns. I was generally going in with veryexperienced scientists whom I trusted a great deal. These experts were from EcoHealthAlliance, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and from various universities.
I trusted them, and I knew that they weren’t inclined to foolishly take unnecessaryrisks. So I did whatever they did. If they wore respirator masks and goggles and twolayers of rubber gloves and rubber boots, then I wore the same. I stood four feet behindthem. I stayed out of the way of needles and blood samples and hoped that they weren’tgoing to hand me a large scratching and clawing fruit bat that might be carrying somelethal virus.
AA: As a writer, how did you feel being among a select few people who wereactually looking at these diseases? Did you feel that you were in the way, or did youfeel that you were facilitating their efforts?
DQ: I felt very privileged and thrilled to be there with these scientistsdoing this work. I knew that it was very important for me not to be hindering thembecause their work is very serious and demanding and also somewhat dangerous. I didn’tfeel like I could be of much help to them, although they sometimes humored me: “Here’s atask for you, you swab the mouth of the bat … and then screw the tops on the bottles.” Iwas happy to be allowed to feel like I was participating.
AA: We have an idea of what you did to write Spillover, but then there’s thequestion of why. You pose this question in the book. Isn’t it misguided to summonconcern over a few scientifically intriguing diseases, some of them new but ofrelatively small impact, while boring old diseases continue to punish humanity?
DQ: It is an important question. Someone who wrote a recent book review wasgently taking me to task for having focused on these, you might even call them“boutique,” diseases that haven’t affected or killed very many people.
First of all, it’s very important to understand zoonotic diseases and the principles ofzoonotic diseases, because in addition to these “boutique” outbreaks that only causemisery or death to a few dozen or a few hundred people, we have other zoonoses that killin the millions. AIDS and influenzas are zoonotic diseases that result from spillover.These diseases can’t be well understood until the principles of zoonotic spillover areunderstood.
Secondly, a large part of my book is devoted to these big epidemics, such as HIV, whichhas killed 30 million people. If someone says, “Well, why pay attention to somethinglike SARS that only killed 800 people,” one of the answers is: The principles we learnfrom it are very important. Additionally, it could have been the next AIDS. We’relooking for the next AIDS, and the next AIDS is going to begin as a small zoonoticspillover. So we should look at every zoonotic spillover because we want to identify thenext AIDS before 15 million people have become infected and are doomed.
AA: This raises an important question. Is humanity a hopeless target of theNext Big One, the next zoonotic pandemic? In all of the interactions we have betweeneach other and animals and, of course, microbes, do we survive each day simply becauseof fool’s luck, or is there a method we can assign to this madness?
DQ: Humanity will inevitably become victim to more of these spillovers. Welive at such high densities and we cause so much disruption in diverse ecosystems thatwe will continue coming in contact with new viruses. There are so many viruses out therethat it is inevitable that some small fraction of them will be capable of spilling intohumans, replicating, and causing severe disease that may be transmissible betweenhumans.What we can affect is how bad the results are of those inevitabilities. Whetherthose spillovers turn into epidemics and pandemics are contingent facts that we caninfluence.
Usually my books are not very hopeful. This book is a little bit more hopeful than peopleexpect, because there are expert voices who are saying to me, “Well, it depends.” Is itpossible for the intelligence and the adaptability of humans to mitigate the severity ofthe Next Big One? I think of it as sort of a race between two factors. On the one hand,there is the inevitability of further zoonotic spillovers, many of which could beextremely murderous. On the other side, there are the scientific advances that we aremaking in public health and the advances in vigilance and response. It’s a race betweenthose two factors, as to how bad the Next Big One will be.
AA: One of the responses you brought up concerned Singapore’s ability tocontain its SARS outbreak. Notably, it was the strong hand of government and medicalauthorities that allowed them to stamp out the sickness. They implemented heavymeasures, like jail time and fines for quarantine breakers, to achieve this. AsAmericans, we might regard such measures as encroaching on our liberty. What are yourthoughts on the role of authority in such emergency situations? How much influenceshould white-coats and suits have when an outbreak occurs?
DQ: The question of civil liberties coming into conflict with diseaseresponse measures is a very serious and complicated question that we need to startthinking about. I’m not going to say, “Here is the answer.” I would like to see theconversation begin, to see people start thinking about this, to see people becomefamiliar with what happened in the case of SARS and what the pros and cons are.
Singapore did contain its SARS outbreak, as did Beijing, Toronto, and Hong Kong, threeother cities that have strong command-and-control and very good public health systems.If SARS had come out of the Congo and gotten into Kinshasa, the results might have beenvery different. I don’t want to be condescending to the Democratic Republic of theCongo. It’s a country that I feel great, great sympathy for. But you don’t have anythingthere like the situation that you have in Singapore in terms of the capacity to controla viral outbreak.
Before 12 years ago, anybody could get on a plane anywhere in the world carrying a pocketknife. Now it’s unthinkable that you would get on a plane carrying a pocket knife. Butyou can still get on a plane carrying a virus. I’ve seen some cases during bad influenzaoutbreaks when I was flying. We were walking through infrared screeners and cameras thatwere telling the authorities whether any of us were running a temperature. I’ve beentold by other people that it’s not all that difficult to screen people for fever or fora particular virus. In the time that it takes us to go through airport security, theycould add an additional step. They could take a swab from the inside of our cheek andrun it very quickly into a sensor. By the time you go through, take off your shoes, andwalk through the scanner, they could also test for a particular virus. If you’recarrying it, they might not let you get on the plane. They might not let you get off theplane.
AA: That adds an interesting angle to transportation security. I rememberyou mention in the book that the outcome of SARS could have been quite different if itentered the subway system, an instance of a human-dense area.
DQ: That’s right. We need to start imagining those possibilities anddiscussing them, and deciding whether [any measures] would be acceptable to us ornot.
When you begin discussing scary viruses, like Ebola, people say we need to be concernedabout bioterrorism. Well, yes, and money is being spent on that. But I like the commentI heard from one of my expert sources. People talk about how they’re going to weaponizethis virus or that virus. Well, think about avian flu. We don’t need to worry about somecult weaponizing it, because the birds are already weaponizing it. The world of natureand things we humans are doing ― disrupting ecosystems and then traveling ― thosefactors are going to be by far the largest measure of our risk. I think that consciousbioterrorism, the possibility that these things might be weaponized and released, is amarginal concern, relative to the natural possibilities of release.
AA: As people concerned for our own health and well-being, we often considerviruses and pathogens as these extremely obscure things that are for some reasonbothering us. As someone with an ecology focus and respect for all forms of life, wouldyou say, “Of course they’re trying to colonize us. That’s just their nature. You have tolook at it without human bias.”
DQ: Yes, absolutely. Viruses are not evil organisms. Viruses are no moreevil organisms than lions or butterflies or frogs are. They’re just trying to surviveand replicate, according to Darwinian principles, the way all other living organisms do(if you consider viruses as living). They obey Darwinian evolution; their activities aredefined by Darwinian natural selection. What they’re trying to do is pass on theirgenomes. There’s nothing sinister about that.
As I say in the book, parasitism and infection are natural processes, every bit as muchas competition, predation, and photosynthesis are natural processes. The infection of anorganism by a virus is no more unnatural than what a lion does to a wildebeest or azebra. These things come to our attention when a new virus spills over into humans.That’s parallel to what happens when a lion occasionally kills a cow and an occasionalcow-herder because it’s been deprived of its natural prey and all that’s around are cowsand cow-herders.
AA: You make a strong case that it is our disruption and disintegration ofthe ecosystem that often allows otherwise isolated microbes to gain an edge and possiblycause outbreaks. Traditionally, the practice of medical professionals is to respond tothe aftermath of such events. Should such professionals have influence in or be involvedwith preventing these outbreaks from ever occurring?
DQ: Yes. Medical doctors and public health professionals should be very muchinvolved, and not just back in the hospitals. You’re seeing that more and more. Some ofthe people that I write about in the book have medical degrees, and quite a few havepublic health degrees.
There’s this new professional I mention in the book who has this synergy of skills andtraining. They maybe start with a degree in veterinary medicine and then add a doctoratein ecology or perhaps a master’s in public health. That’s somebody who can be out there,in the forest, in the villages, observing and helping to influence what is done toreduce the risk of spillovers and to contain spillovers when they occur.
Add to those human physicians and virologists. I think it would be great if more peoplewith both medical degrees and degrees in virology move into field work on zoonoticspillovers. That kind of training is essential to this field. I do know a few of thesekinds of professionals. For instance, there is Karl Johnson, M.D. He’s probably thegranddad of Ebola work. He’s a friend of mine, and he probably wouldn’t want me to callhim that, maybe “the father of Ebola work.” He was trained as a medical doctor andconsiders himself a viral ecologist. We need more Karl Johnsons; we need more peoplewith that kind of training, with a medical degree and an understanding of the ecology ofviruses, and how something can come out of a rodent in the rural landscape of Boliviaand cause a hemorrhagic fever in people.
AA: Some patients, children, adults, and the immunocompromised own exoticpets. A study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (Grant andOlsen, 1999) demonstrated that physicians don’t feel comfortable discussing the roles ofanimals in the transmission of zoonotic diseases with patients, and yet people don’tlook to their veterinarians for education on human health. What do you think of thisfundamental divide?
DQ: That’s why EcoHealth Alliance is in business, to fill that gap inbetween there, in terms of doing research, but also in terms of educating the public.It’s only one organization, but it’s an organization with some very good people in it.It’s going to become more and more important.
There are also people like Nathan Wolfe. He directs Global Viral, what was formerly knownas the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. He has developed a method where bloodsamples taken simply on filter paper and carried home dry can then be used to screen forcertain viruses using PCR. He is collecting samples in Central Africa and Southeast Asiaand elsewhere from people involved in bushmeat. He is getting them to take blood samplesof the bushmeat, and he is getting blood samples from them, too. He is out there doingthis joint diagnosis. Are there new viruses ― or are there known but dangerous viruses ―that are being carried in wild animals killed for bushmeat, and are those virusesgetting into the hunters, the first-line consumers? That is just one situations in whichthere is this integration of veterinary and human medicine.
AA: I would imagine exotic pets are a concern as well in this integrativefield.
DQ: Yes, definitely. Lassa fever got into the United States by way of theexotic pet trade. It is possible for others as well, viruses that can be transmitted byexotic pets and domestic pets, to a certain extent. For example, there are a number ofdiseases that can be passed even from dogs and cats into humans.
AA: Do you think that some sort of early communication between the twoprofessions of veterinary and medical education would help future doctors appreciate theemergency of infectious diseases?
DQ: Absolutely. I think that to teach infectious disease without teachingabout zoonotic disease is illogical. I think it would be very helpful. It’s almost liketrying to teach somebody calculus without having taught them algebra and geometry.
AA: Considering the range of subjects we’ve talked about, is there anythingyou would like to add?
DQ: I think what we’ve been talking about is very important. The reason I’vewritten this book is to try and make the connection not just between veterinary scienceand human science, but between the scientific and medical professionals and the generalpublic. I think it’s really important for people to understand better some of thescience, some of these dynamics and principles.
What I say to you is, don’t try to apply your knowledge until you have some. What I meanby that is, invest a little time and mental energy in reading my book or reading someother book and actually understanding the principles of this phenomenon and getting alittle bit deeper into it. I’m not going to hand you a card that says, “Here are two orthree things you can do to save the world from zoonotic diseases.” It’s verycomplicated, and that’s why my book is more than 500 pages long.
I’m a science writer. This is a very important ecological niche, the niche that we arein: the translation of complicated and urgent medical science into forms that areconsumable and absorbable by the general public without being oversimplified, withoutbeing sensationalized, without being rendered inaccurate. I would like to mention thisas a reminder to medical professionals, in order to encourage them to have some time andpatience for the next science writer who knocks on their door.
AA: That was my next question. Physicians and scientists usually haveprecious little free time for pleasure reading, let alone keeping up with scientificliterature. How could they benefit from reading Spillover? Some concerns I heard werethat there are too many details here that you and I would consider texture in a story.Professionals might want to get to the bottom line, fast.
DQ: What I’ve tried to do in Spillover is to encompass alot of very important and very complicated scientific information in a package thatreads like a guilty pleasure. Sugar coating it is a little bit too cynical a way to putit. I’ve tried to create a book that is interesting to people who love books and wholove reading. But also it delivers a whole lot of education to people on a veryimportant subject.
Why should a busy medical professional read this book to learn about zoonotic diseaseswhen he or she perhaps could read a 100-page review article and get much of the sameinformation? My answer this: They should read it because this is a book that can be animportant tool to them. He or she might discover that this a book that they would liketo give to his or her brother-in-law, sister, nephew, niece who’s considering going toveterinary school, and mother who is saying, “What is it that you do again?” I hope thatI’ve created a very valuable tool to bring this information to a lot of people whoordinarily would not be patient enough or interested enough to consume thisinformation.
I would say the scientific professionals could benefit from reading this book becausethen they know what’s out there, that it can be a tool for them to try and explain thissubject to other members of the general public.
AA: What you are really getting at there is a motivation for writers towrite about science.
DQ: Yes. We’re always working for two audiences. We’re working for anaudience that is in front of us and an audience that we can see when we glance back overour shoulder. The audience in front of us is the general public, and the scientists whoare our sources are the audience behind out shoulder. We’re mostly addressing thegeneral public, but we have to look over our shoulder every once in a while and seewhether those scientists, those experts, those people who’ve served as sources arenodding or shaking their heads. We need to make sure that we’ve got them on board, thatwe satisfy their standards of what good scientific explanation is.
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I’m sure that there are mistakes in my book, and there are some things that I could havedone better. But I’ve taken a lot of trouble to write readable and enjoyable books thatalso are very accurate and substantive scientifically.
If you sell a million books, but the scientists say, “Oh, it’s bull----, it’s hype, it’ssensationalism,” then that’s a problem.
AA: David, I want to thank you for this opportunity.
DQ: You’re very welcome, Abdul. I’ve enjoyed talking with you, and Iappreciate your interest in the book.
Articles from The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine are provided here courtesy of Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine