This is the third book I've read in the last two years written by a National Geographic writer. The first two were actually histories about T.R. and Garfield. This one is about science and one conclusion I've come to is that NatGeo folks can write. The topic here is zoonosis - the transference of viruses from animals to humans.
It's a scary topic because this transference has led to the Black Death, the 1919 flu pandemic, Hendra, bird flu, Ebola, SARS, Marburg, West Nile fever, Lyme disease and the big one - AIDS. Science strives to find out who was the reservoir host and when and how the transference was made. As most of these viruses are in the tropics, the challenge becomes bringing modern medical research to primitive societies, often in the midst of political turmoil. Unfortunately for the physicians and researchers, their reward is often a grisly painful end.
HIV-1 is the modern catastrophe that has garnered the most attention, as it has killed 30 million and there are another 34 million infected. The scientists believe it has been around for a very long time and that there have been twelve spillovers. The modern spillover took place about the year 1908 in southwest Cameroon, almost certainly through blood to blood contact, when a local harvested bushmeat from a chimp. For the next fifty years, it remained contained in a small population, but started to spread through sexual contact in the late fifties. It is believed to have left Africa in the sixties when Haitians took over for the expelled Belgian medical community in the Congo. It came to the US in the seventies through the import of blood plasma from Haiti. The rest is, as they say, history.
The concern in the scientific community is "the next big one". Scenarios like the movie 'Contagion' is what is feared. And the consensus expectation is that it will be some sort of avian flu from the Asian continent, thus affirming one of my life conclusions- no Africa or Asia on my bucket list.
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