Synopses & Reviews
Unpurified drinking water. Improper use of antibiotics. Local warfare. Massive refugee migration. Changing social and environmental conditions around the world have fostered the spread of new and potentially devastating viruses and diseases—HIV, Lassa, Ebola, and others. Laurie Garrett takes you on a fifty-year journey through the world's battles with microbes and examines the worldwide conditions that have culminated in recurrent outbreaks of newly discovered diseases, epidemics of diseases migrating to new areas, and mutated old diseases that are no longer curable. She argues that it is not too late to take action to prevent the further onslaught of viruses and microbes, and offers possible solutions for a healthier future.
Synopsis
The definitive account of epidemics in our time, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning public heath expert Laurie Garrett. A New York Times notable book
Unpurified drinking water. Improper use of antibiotics. Local warfare. Massive refugee migration. Changing social and environmental conditions around the world have fostered the spread of new and potentially devastating viruses and diseases--HIV, Lassa, Ebola, and others. Laurie Garrett takes you on a fifty-year journey through the world's battles with microbes and examines the worldwide conditions that have culminated in recurrent outbreaks of newly discovered diseases, epidemics of diseases migrating to new areas, and mutated old diseases that are no longer curable. She argues that it is not too late to take action to prevent the further onslaught of viruses and microbes, and offers possible solutions for a healthier future.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Machupo: Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever
2. Health Transition: The Age of OptimismSetting Out to Eradicate Disease
3. Monkey Kidneys and the Ebbing Tides: Marburg Virus, Yellow Fever, and the Brazilian Meningitis Epidemic
4. Into the Woods: Lassa Fever
5. Yambuku: Ebola
6. The American Bicentennial: Swine Flu and Legionnaires' Disease
7. N'zara: Lassa, Ebola, and the Developing World's Economic and Social Policies
8. Revolution: Genetic Engineering and the Discovery of Oncogenes
9. Microbe Magnets: Urban Centers of Disease
10. Distant Thunder: Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Injecting Drug Users
11. Hatari: Vinidogodogo (Danger: A Very Little Thing): The Origins of AIDS
12. Feminine Hygiene (As Debated, Mostly, by Men): Toxic Shock Syndrome
13. The Revenge of the Germs, or Just Keep Inventing New Drugs: Drug-resistant Bacteria, Viruses, and Parasites
14. Thirdworldization: The Interactions of Poverty, Poor Housing, and Social Despair with Disease
15. All in Good Haste: Hantaviruses in America
16. Nature and Homo sapiens: Seal Plague, Cholera, Global Warming, Biodiversity, and the Microbial Soup
17. Searching for Solutions: Preparedness, Surveillance, and the New Understanding
Afterword
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index