![]() 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. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. 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. When a certain strain takes the leap and infects a human, scientists call that event spillover. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. Summary In Spillover, David Quammen (one of my favorite science writers) takes us through jungles, villages, and laboratories to study zoonoses: animal infections that can jump to humans. 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. ![]() The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. Spillover is a single event during which a pathogen from 1 species moves into another species such movement can result in an outbreak. ![]() ![]() A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases. ![]()
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