http://www.panoramio.com/photo/73496240
What do diseases like Ebola, Influenza, SARS, and Rabies have in common? Well, for one, they’re all viruses. Second, and more germane to this discussion, they’re all zoonoses–diseases that are usually harbored in non-human animal hosts but occasionally spill over into humans. Zoonoses are the subject of David Quammen’s excellent and aptly named new book, Spillover.
http://www.realscience.us/2012/07/30/ebola-virus-spreads-across-uganda/
Quammen is in peak form with Spillover: he tracks these diseases and the researchers who study them from goat farms in Holland to bat caves in Uganda to wild meat markets on the Chinese mainland near Hong Kong. The book reads like a thriller–where exactly is Ebola lurking?– but doesn’t need fictional plot twists to keep the pages turning. Quammen’s accurate, clear, and exiting descriptions of the epidemiology, ecology, and evolution of zoonotic diseases keeps the pages turning instead.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Lesser_short-nosed_fruit_bat_(Cynopterus_brachyotis).jpg
A central message of Spillover is that a “successful” zoonosis is the result of opportunity. That is to say, the life history of many zoonotic agents does not require a pass through human populations; they will survive, reproduce, and spread just fine in their animal hosts. However, if a zoonotic disease happens to find itself in a human body, those viruses (or bacteria, or protozoans, etc.) that can survive will survive, reproduce, and possibly spread to other people. Thus, the story of zoonoses is the story of humans creating the opportunity for spillover by coming into contact with animal hosts. For example, HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is closely related to SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) and all evidence suggests that it spilled into human populations through the use of chimpanzees for food. Nipah, a neurological and respiratory disease in Malaysia, Singapore, and Bangladesh, likely spills over into human populations through contact with fruit bat feces, contact that is becoming more common as human cities, towns, and agricultural fields encroach on the tropical rainforests that the bats call home. In sum, close contact with wild animals greatly increases the chance of spillover.
Close contact with wild animals… Close contact… Hmmm, what is it we do again?…
Oh yeah… Uh oh!
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