EID Book Review - Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

Link to book on Amazon (excerpts available online)

 

# 6834

 

In 2012, award winning author and Rhodes Scholar David Quammen published his 10th book on science, titled  Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Quammen, whose first book was published in 1970, also has five books of fiction, along with many magazine articles in his resume.

 

Today, the CDC’s EID Journal has a short, but very complementary review of his book, Spillover.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that reviews on Amazon have been superlative as well, and Spillover has made more than one Top 10 books of 2012 lists. 

 

First the EID review, then I’ll return with more.

Books and Media

Spillover: Animal Infection and the Next Human Pandemic

Article Contents

David Quammen
W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd., New York, New York, USA, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-06680-7
Pages: 487; Price: US $28.95

Spillover is a single event during which a pathogen from 1 species moves into another species; such movement can result in an outbreak. In 9 chapters, David Quammen chronicles various spillover events by using personal anecdotes and multiple stories to recount these events for the expert and novice alike. He frames the events within an ecologic sense of the pathogen, the host, and the increasing human population. He focuses recurrently on the NBO (next big one) and how, if HIV or Ebola virus were more easily transmissible, no one would remain to read his book.

 

Quammen’s analogies are superb. Instead of trying to turn the reader into a scientist with dry explanations, he uses analogies that have universal relevance. For viral morphology, Ebola and Hendra virions together would resemble a “capellini in a light sauce of capers.” Mathematical modeling can be appreciated in translation, just as Dostoevsky can be appreciated in translation instead of in the original Russian. Quammen compares combining specific antibodies with their virus to splashing holy water on a witch. Regarding airborne transmission, he says that pathogens can “waft into a nearby village as easily as the pleasant, autumnal smell of smoke from a pile of leaves.” Throughout the book, the subjects of human and animal diseases are “. . . strands of one braided cord.”

 

The last chapter, “It Depends,” is particularly sobering. If, in an ecologic sense, an outbreak is a rapid and explosive increase in the abundance of a particular species, then maybe humans are the current outbreak in the world. We have become a dense forest; tinder is dry; and the NBO is around the corner.

 

Who should read this book? Anyone interested in science can enjoy it—those who make their living at the bench, teach, or study—and anyone just looking for a good read.

Corrie Brown

Author affiliation: Author affiliation: University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

 

 

Spillover also received a glowing endorsement from Ed Yong when he was at Discover Magazine (see Spillover, by David Quammen – a recommended read), and I can wholeheartedly recommend it myself.

 

For more on David’s book, and the threats posed by zoonotic disease spillovers, we turn to a Minnesota NPR radio interview recorded last September. It runs 30 minutes, and is well worth the time.

 

 

David Quammen on 'Spillover,' the next worldwide pandemic

11:20 AM, September 24, 2012

IOM Book On Infectious Disease

 

 

 

# 5248

 

 

I’ve mentioned the IOM (Institute of Medicine) a number of times in the past, and have directed my readers to the National Academies Press for scientific reports, and books that may be purchased, viewed online - or in many cases - downloaded for free.

 

If you have a scientific bent at all, you owe it to yourself to visit http://www.nap.edu/ to peruse the more than 3,000 titles available.

 

Today I’d like to call your attention to a recently published (2010) 44-page booklet, authored by the Institute of Medicine and geared for general audiences, on infectious diseases.

 

 

The National Academies Press describes it this way:

 

About a quarter of deaths worldwide--many of them children--are caused by infectious organisms. The World Health Organization reports that new infectious diseases are continuing to emerge and familiar ones are appearing in new locations around the globe. What's behind this trend? How can invisible organisms cause such harm? And to what extent has human behavior amplified the problem?

What You Need to Know About Infectious Disease provides an overview of infectious disease, drawing on reports of the Institute of Medicine. Written for a general audience, it describes the biology, history, and future trends of some of the world's most widespread and harmful infections and explains what we need to do--as individuals and as a society--to address this global challenge.

 

 

In order to download this book, you’ll have to provide your name and a valid email address, but it is otherwise free.

 

This book provides a relatively painless introduction to the world of emerging infectious diseases - particularly for students and the lay public - as it never burdens the reader with too much scientific detail. 

 

It does, however, cover most of the major bases (how diseases work, major disease threats, global challenges, prevention & treatment), and is nicely complemented by a variety of graphics and pictures.

 

My thanks to Laidback Al on FluTrackers for posting this link.

Review: Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA

 

 

# 4451

 

 

 

In moments of quiet reverie I often find myself wishing I could dance like Astaire, or maybe sing like Sinatra, or perhaps compose like Gershwin.

 

But in truth, I’d happily settle for being able to write about science and medicine as well as does Maryn McKenna.

 

This is not a recent revelation, as I’ve been a avid fan of Maryn’s work for several years. But it was reinforced this past Friday with the arrival of Maryn’s book  Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, which I’ve been eagerly devouring. 

 

If that title seems a bit over-the-top, trust me . . . it isn’t.  

 

MRSA is a fatal menace, and and as you read this narrative of its spread, you soon realize that calling it a `Superbug’ is totally appropriate. 

 

 

 

While chock full of scientific information, Superbug reads more like a fast-paced medical thriller than a science book.  Maryn writes so vividly, that when she takes you into the ICU (which is often), you can all but smell the antiseptic.

 

Superbug manages to deliver an enormous amount of scientific data almost painlessly by incorporating it into the stories of people (and their families) that MRSA has devastated, or those are trying to understand and stop its spread. 

 

I can think of a great many superlatives to describe this book; engaging, harrowing, fascinating, powerful . . .  even terrifying at times. 

 

But the descriptive term that keeps coming back to me is: 

 

Important.

 

There is probably no graver health threat facing the world today than the rise of antibiotic resistant pathogens.  And it isn’t just MRSA.  There’s VRSA, VRE, VISA, Acinetobacter and others. 

 

The way we use (and misuse) antibiotics in humans, and on the farm, plays a huge role in our ability to deal with infections today and in the future.   As Maryn points out, we need to make changes in hospital procedures, community health care, farming practices, prisons, and antibiotic awareness if we are to combat these emerging superbugs.

 

Much as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed the meatpacking industry and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alerted us to man-made threats to our environment, Maryn McKenna’s Superbug should be viewed as a clarion call for changes we must make if we hope to control this rapidly growing health threat.

 

I am chagrined to confess that even though I’ve been aware of MRSA for years, have read about it often, and even recently lost a relative to MRSA pneumonia  - until I read this book -- I’ve not really appreciated just how profound a threat that antibacterial resistant pathogens pose to mankind.

 

MRSA kills at least 19,000 Americans every year, hospitalizes hundreds of thousands more, and causes millions of visits to doctors and emergency rooms.  It adds tens of billions to our health care costs, and the human costs are incalculable.

 

Yet, incredibly . . . 

 

• 50% of health care workers fail to consistently wash their hands between patients. 
• Hospitals often rely on `passive’ detection instead of active surveillance for MRSA
• MRSA is still not a `notifiable disease’ in many states preventing uniform and accurate surveillance and reporting
• Millions of pounds of antibiotics are used for non-therapeutic use on farms in order to `promote animal growth’. 
• And we ignore the spread of MRSA in fertile breeding grounds like prisons that continually send the pathogen back out into the community.

 

 

MRSA, and other resistant pathogens, are evolving faster than our ability to create new classes of antibiotics to combat them.  As Maryn reports, the only viable solution may be the creation of a vaccine against staph. But developing a vaccine will require time, enormous funding, and the political will to make it happen.  

 

All of which are in short supply.

 

Superbug, quite frankly, should be required reading for every doctor, nurse, and health care professional, if for no other reason than to alert them to the changes they must make in order to help curb the spread of these deadly pathogens.

 

But it should also be on the reading list of parents, students, and teachers who need to be able to recognize the early warning signs of infection. 

 

And just as importantly, read by those who make policy at the local, state, and Federal level.  We either make institutional changes or risk serious peril from these resistant bacteria.

 

 

This is a book I will keep, and I am certain, will re-read and refer to often.  Even if you don’t normally read  `science books’,  you should take the time to read this one.  

 

Superbug is not only a fascinating book, it’s an important one.

 

Highly recommended.

 

Order Superbug From Amazon

Superbug book website

Superbug blog 

Maryn McKenna Interview On Book

 

 

 

Full Disclosure:   While I’ve never met Maryn McKenna in person, we did talk once on the telephone (she interviewed me in 2007 for a CIDRAP News story), and we’ve exchanged a number of emails and twitter communications over the years.

 

So I consider her a friend as well as a blogging colleague.

 

I ordered my copy of SUPERBUG from Amazon in early January . Several days afterward, Maryn offered to send me a publishers advance copy, which arrived in my mailbox on Friday.

 

I will keep my paid-for copy when it arrives, and pass the gratis copy I received on to a Health Care Professional I know to be interested in the subject.