Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

Update on 4/5/20: This book is one of a handful of relatively recent books that will greatly help you understand COVID 19, Coronaviruses, and animal to human disease jumps. I highly recommend this book as well as Micheal Osterholm's book "Deadliest Enemy". The COVID 19 pandemic was a disaster just waiting to happen. The awful truth is we knew it but pretty much ignored the warnings. The scary reality is that another infectious pandemic of a different virus (flu?) could begin tomorrow, next month, or in the next few years. When we get past COVID 19 we CANNOT go back to business as usual! We MUST take this lesson in public health and prepare ourselves. The world spent $1.8 trillion dollars arming itself in 2019 (Wikipedia). If we took a tiny fraction of that money and devoted it to public health, disease control, and vaccination development we could prevent tens of millions of premature deaths! Please read this or one of the other excellent books on this subject and don't let our leaders go back to their old ways!!! Author David Quammen has written an important, informative, and entertaining (really!) book. He has taken on a potentially dry and depressing subject and made it both understandable and interesting. He's a very good science writer and I'll be looking forward to reading more titles from him. Quammen takes the reader on a journey through the world of epidemiologists, pathologists, veterinarians, and other scientists who put their health and lives on the line in the name of world health and science. He takes us into the story of some of the most deadly recent diseases in the world, all of which have jumped from animals to humans. This is a fascinating and critical story. Its a long book. My one mild criticism would be I think it could have been edited down somewhat without damaging its content or quality. I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in the subject.

This is the best book I have read in a long time. It is like a mystery thriller played out in various exotic locations around the world, that simultaneously, gives the reader intriguing and accurate knowledge about various exotic but dangerous pathogens that have the potential to forever change life as we know it. In other words, if you would put the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, a travel diary book by Bill Bryson, and an Agatha Christie thriller in the mixer, you would get something like this. It just doesn't get better than this! David Quammen's writing is accessible and throughout the book I was amazed by his ability to explaining difficult scientific concepts in a way that makes the reader understand... even crave science. Though I have read many scholarly articles, no single text I can recall have given me such a deep understanding and appreciation for a scientific subject. I have always been fascinated by bacteria and viruses, however this book multiplied my fascination and my appreciation for the scientists that study viruses and other pathogens in humans as well as in other species. This book is about spillovers (surprise!). A spillover is when a virus or a bacteria which normally live in one species transfer to a different species. Normally this transition spells the end for the pathogen because they evolved to live in their host species and not in the new species, but sometimes the pathogen survive or even thrive in their new host, which is typically bad news for the new host. Think of pathogens such as Ebola, rabies, HIV, SARS, and the Spanish flu, all of which are spillovers from other species, and you will understand that pathogens that have the potential to spillover a.k.a zoonotic viruses can result in disaster. Be assured, you will learn much about these intriguing pathogens, however, this book is not just a review of what we know about zoonotic viruses. On the very first page Quammen takes us to a sunny idyllic farm in Australia. Recently a number of horses have died following under mysterious circumstances. Worse still, several humans that came into contact with the horse also died. What caused these deaths and from where did the horses acquire it? Quammen instantly grips the reader. It was an instant page turner, with real science in it! You must know how these horses and humans died and you gladly, eagerly, follow Quammen when he takes you on a journey in the scientific literature as it develops over time, with frequent field visits that Quammen personally joined to understand the subject better. Quammen cover several different pathogens, including HIV, Ebola, malaria, and SARS, and he travels accordingly. We get to follow scientists (and Quammen) into crowded Asian markets where hundreds of different animal species, each with their own set of nished pathogens, can be bought for that evenings dinner. We get to visit Bangladesh to analyse date-palm-sap to see if bats have pooped deadly virus into this popular drink. We visit the Congolese jungle where Ebola have completely eradicated large populations of gorillas as well as some smaller human populations. We go to caves filled with snakes, bats and guano. Of course we also get to visit high tech laboratories around the world to talk to researchers who try to understand these zoonotic viruses and predict where the next big pandemic will strike - because if or when "the next big one", capable of killing us by the millions, comes, it will almost certainly be a spillover from another species. The human species is vulnerable. We are around seven billion people. We are an urban species meaning that we tend of cluster in large groups (cities), which provides pathogens with the perfect springboard. We travel extensively, and could thus easily spread a virus around the globe in a short amount of time. We also continually mess with new ecological systems which may or may not have a deadly virus just waiting for a new host... Put another way. Human population growth is an typical example of an outbreak i.e., explosive population growth. Just like with outbreaks of crickets that sweep across Africa eating everything it encounter, humans are sweeping across the entire planet, interfering with lots of ecological systems along the way. Indeed the most massive outbreak of any species that the world had ever seen is not a cricket or a larva, it is homo sapiens. And when there is an outbreak of a particular species what typically halts it? You guessed it - pathogens.

Il libro che mi ha fatto appassionare all' epidemiologia. Gli eventi qui narrati mi hanno fatto scoprire una ricerca di altri tempi, permettendomi al tempo stesso di immergermi nella vita di persone che hanno contribuito ala conoscenza di molteplici agenti letali per l'uomo ed animali. Consigliato per chiunque voglia espandere i propri orizzonti.

Muy interesante, informativo y ameno. No es un inglés técnico, sino periodístico

El libro es muy interesante, y a cada página dan ganas de leer la siguiente. Si compran este libro podrían considerar ahorrarse "The Chimp and the River" porque ese libro derivó de un capítulo con el mismo título de este libro.

This book is indeed a page-turner. The topics this book touched upon relate to our day to day lives and our surroundings and the ecosystem we live in. Humans have been destroying this ecosystem for their own benefit, and every act of injury to Nature has repercussions. And the zoonotic diseases that come out of this cauldron of animal killing, deforestation and rapid urbanization are not here to stay put. Viruses like Hendra, Ebola, West Nile, Marburg, HIV, Nipah, Influenza etc. have been given a good share of pages in this book. Other diseases like Malaria, Lyme Disease,... too. It's a big book, not so easy to read, if you are not really into diseases and their origins. But the way it has been written, true to everyone reading this, even a lazy reader can sit on his desk and peruse it for hours. Virus behaviour, evolution, genetic mutations and phylogenetics have been explored while telling the different case studies. However, the best part (for me) is when the spillover of HIV is described using a person "Voyager" in the book. That is how Science books should be written, I guess. And David Quammen was extremely professional throughout the book. I wish him a long and healthy life.

David Quammen’s book about zoonotic (animal to human) diseases is essential reading in the middle of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, because it is highly relevant to this current crisis. This remarkable book is profoundly informative and fascinating. If anyone thought a book about virology, epidemics and human pandemics would be hard work and boring, they would be wrong. Quammen's book is gripping, moving and exciting. And this easy-to-read book clearly explains the complex dynamics between viruses, insects, birds, mammals and humans. This is first book I have found that defines the replication, random mutation and transmission of viruses in a most straightforward manner. Quammen opens with a description of the virus Hendra, which attacks horses with devastating results with occasional spillover to humans. He moves on Ebola before tackling malaria, Lyme disease, SAR-CoV, HIV and many others. His SAR-CoV interviews with scientists, doctors, patients and survivors reveal a frightening similarity and timeline to the current Coronavirus crisis, whilst underlining one of the most important differences: SAR-CoV showed symptoms almost immediately, whilst CoVid-19 symptoms show themselves several weeks after infection, by which time the virus has been widely spread. Quammen's commentaries revealing the suffering and treatment of many of the victims of these epidemics are compelling, compassionate and intensely moving. He also provides superb unbiased analyses of the research into each disease, setting alternative theories side by side, and gently leading the reader through complex matters such epidemiology, virology and mathematical epidemiology. His research is backed up by incredible personal experiences - such as following the catching and sampling of bats in Bangladesh and in the horrendous cobra-infested caves of Uganda. This is an excellent thought-provoking book - intelligent, well researched popular science at its best.