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 | | The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett ISBN-10: 9780140250916 ISBN-10: 0-14-025091-3 ISBN-13: 9780140250916 ISBN-13: 978-0-14-025091-6 Paperback 1995-10-01 Penguin (Non-Classics) Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description A critically acclaimed study documents the outbreaks of newly discovered diseases around the globe, such as HIV, Lassa, and Ebola, and explores the social and environmental deterioration that helps to keep such viruses alive. Reprint. Tour. NYT. | ||
Amazon.com Review Where's your next disease coming from? From anywhere in the world--from overflowing sewage in Cairo, from a war zone in Rwanda, from an energy-efficient office building in California, from a pig farm in China or North Carolina. "Preparedness demands understanding," writes Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett, and in this precursor to Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, she shows a clear understanding of the patterns lying beneath the new diseases in the headlines (AIDS, Lyme) and the old ones resurgent (tuberculosis, cholera). As the human population explodes, ecologies collapse and simplify, and disease organisms move into the gaps. As globalization continues, diseases can move from one country to another as fast as an airplane can fly.
While the human race battles itself ... the advantage moves to the microbes' court. They are our predators and they will be victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn how to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities. Her picture is not entirely bleak. Epidemics grow when a disease outbreak is amplified--by contaminated water supplies, by shared needles, by recirculated air, by prostitution. And controlling the amplifiers of disease is within our power; it's a matter of money, people, and will. --Mary Ellen Curtin | ||
Reviews | ||
terrible organization Could have been a great book except for the terrible organization. For that reason I would not recommend it. I found biohazard by Ken Alibek a much better read. | ||
Global cesspool? Garrett's "The Coming Plague" is a 600+ tome exploring virtually all things infectious -- Ebola, Epstein-Barr, HIV, Escherichia coli, gonorrhea, herpes, Streptococcus, etc. -- and the role that they've played in our evolution and, potentially, our demise. Garrett discusses at length the diseases plaguing the equatorial parts of the world, previous outbreaks, and how a shift in ecology, increased resistance to antibiotics, and inhumane conditions will all but guarantee future outbreaks with a lethality exceeding anything seen thus far. The chapter on HIV/AIDS was particularly illuminating and a great compliment to Shilts' "And the Band Played On" (Shilts explores the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and the social and political ramifications of it's emergence). Although the emergence of HIV/AIDS has been a source of intense debate since it swept the world, Garrett notes that in spite of the global scientific effort (as of 1994), nobody had yet "pinpointed a time, place, or key event responsible for the emergence of HIV-1" (pp.389). Garrett would be remiss if she didn't explore the why and the how of disease emergence, i.e. disease amplifiers. The obvious -- and most destructive -- ones are sexual promiscuity, re-use of syringes, and antibiotic resistance. She draws on the work of a U.Washington epidemiologist, King Holmes, and a mathematical equation he developed to describe the role promiscuity had in amplifying disease, that is, the rate at which infection reproduced (pp.611). The components of the equation (multiplied together) are (1) the mean efficiency of transmission of the microbe per sexual contact (higher is worse); (2) duration of infectiousness (higher is worse); and (3) the mean number of sexual partners per day (obviously, higher is worse). The obvious implication of this equation is that the first two components are microbial characteristics whereas the last component is fully a human behavioral issue...it then follows that for sexually transmissible diseases (e.g. HIV/AIDS), it's emergence into a global epidemic seemed almost inevitable. Garrett concludes the book on a marginally pessimistic note -- our global neglect of microbes in the last 50+ years has given them the upper hand -- although she rightly declares that if the human race does not learn to cooperate, share resources, and live together in our global village, the predatory microbe will usher in a plague not yet seen. | ||
We're screwed... The topic is interesting (and quite frightening) but, the way the book is presented is rather dull. There's a lot of redundancies in the early chapters dealing with outbreaks of various diseases. A lot of the middle section is about the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This was interesting; I grew up during the 80's but was only vaguely aware of the whole AIDS issue at the time. Then we get into issues of climate change, drug-resistant microbes, and other reasons why we are setting ourselves up for the next global pandemic. Again, TCP was fairly interesting but somewhat of a struggle to get through becuase of the presentation. Read it anyway; it's worth the effort. Recommended. | ||
A Catalogue of terrorists that we cannot defeat Laurie Garrett has broken the code of the death of the human race. While we look outward to the sky for asteroids, comets and plot scenarios to send nuclear weapons out to meet them in deep outer space, and prepare for the "Big Crunch" four billion years away, right in our own biological backyard is a much more proximate, devious and clever enemy that is relentless in its pursuit of bringing humanity to "heel." Germ warfare is not in Saddam Hussein's mobile units, but at our front, back and side doors, and it is gaining as it learns to overcome every defense that we can throw in its path. Surprisingly the author makes us aware of an important fact that the best ally of this formidable biological enemy is humans themselves. Our habits of poor health and eating habits, unpurified water, unprotected sex, over use of antibiotics, massive immigration, pollution, deforestation all play into the hands of this relentless and aggressive terrorist. Diseases such as HIV, Lassa, Ebola, etc. are all opportunistic microbes taking what the human traffic will bear and then learning (ever-learning) how to survive in increasingly more hostile and more complex environments. Microbes have a comparative advantage in adaptation, and for that reason alone will outwit humans in the arms race for survival. Their strategy is a "pure" one: surviving by jumping from one species to another and then consolidating its survival in the new environment through the Darwinian principle of mutation combined with specialization. Here in one volume is "chapter and verse" of how diseases and viruses have come about and how they are constantly gaining ground, as well as what we have done to enable and promote their survival chances at the expense of our own. It is encyclopedic in scope yet readable and sobering, scary, if not down right terrifying. It is a battle against a terrorist that we cannot win, nor can we even declare a truce, or call for a peace treaty. As John Lee Hooker says, "we won't get out the blues alive." Four stars | ||
Interesting Non-Fiction This book is incredibly thorough in recounting the "surfacing" of incredibly virulent diseases such as Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola, etc. For a non-scientist, it's quite an eye-opener in terms of the intricate methods researchers have to employ in order to identify and understand a localized epidemic. Once (if) they figure everything out, it goes into stages of prevention and further research. However, for a scientist, I feel like this book lacks many of the details regarding the cellular mechanisms of the infectious agents (viruses, bacteria, prions, etc.). However, it is a great way to start and eventually search for primary literature regarding each of the presented "probable" epidemics. All in all, this is a good read for anyone who wants to learn more about the role of epidemiologists or how 'terrible' viruses attack (entire or groups of) populations. I do wish that there was a more in-depth version that would elaborate on the actual mechanisms that affect the human body. For instance, the mechanisms of viral hemorrhagic fevers and how they lead to such degeneration of the capillaries that they begin to 'leak.' This book is not meant to scare you, as the title may imply, but rather to inform you of the probable plagues that we face today. | ||