Animals Viruses and Humans, A Narrow Divide

Download or read book Animals Viruses and Humans, A Narrow Divide written by Warren A. Andiman and published by Paul Dry Books. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A frighteningly fascinating reminder of just how closely connected human health and the planet’s ecosystems are."—Booklist "Andiman gives you a front row seat in the ongoing battle between man and disease . . . Gripping stories, filled with details that are in equal part delicious and disgusting, but always fascinating."—Lisa Sanders, MD, author of Every Patient Tells a Story and the New York Times Magazine "Diagnosis" column "Dr. Andiman was at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America, so he knows as well as anyone the disrupting power of new viruses and their impact on human societies."—Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine “To reproduce promiscuously and to wreak havoc wherever they can find a home,” this is the raison d’être of viruses, writes Dr. Warren Andiman, an HIV/AIDS researcher who has been on the front lines battling infectious diseases for over forty years. In Animal Viruses and Humans: A Narrow Divide, Andiman traces the history of eight zoonotic viruses—deadly microbes that have made the leap directly from animals to human populations: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) * Swine influenza * Hantavirus * Monkeypox * Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) * Rabies * Ebola * Henipaviruses (Nipah and Hendra). He also illustrates the labor intensive and fascinating detective work that infectious disease specialists must do to uncover the source of an outbreak. Andiman also looks to the future, envisioning the effects on zoonoses (diseases caused by zoonotic viruses) of climate change, microenvironmental damage, population shifts, and globalization. He reveals the steps that we can, and must, take to stem the spread of animal viruses, explaining, “The zoonoses I've chosen to write about . . . are meant to describe only a small sample of what is already out there but, more menacingly, what is inevitably on its way, in forms we can only imagine.”