Emerging-Infectious-Diseases Books

This is an excellent book, well written by expert in their field, most of them are my mentor at the John's Jopkins Univ.

I'm a doctor, a specialist of naval and tropical medicine. "Hunter's Tropical Medicine" is the most important publication which I need and use for my job.

this book is well written by experts in their field, excellent book , used it as your bible. Most of the author are my former mentor at the John's Hopkins Univ.

This book is essential to practice developing world medicine. I'd be lost without it.

Denise Grady is a medical reporter who decided to survey the threats of flu and new illnesses caused by viruses, journeying to Angola to study the spread of Marburg. Hers is not only a survey of a single disease, but charts the course of health issues, scientific investigation, and accompany social and ethical issues. Students in grades 5-8 will find Deadly Invaders: Virus Outbreaks Around the World, from Marburg Fever to Avian Flu to be an important first-person journey with many implications for modern health.

When I received my copy of DEADLY INVADERS, I had every intention of focusing on two of the diseases I was most familiar with--Avian (Bird) Flu and West Nile Disease. I had never actually heard of Marburg Fever, but quickly realized that a large portion of the book was devoted to this disease, and became intrigued.

The Marburg Story is broken down into six sections: Luanda, Angola; The Hot Zone; Arrival in Uige; Claudia's Funeral; The Outbreak Ends, and Animal Origins. So what is Marburg Fever? The Marburg virus is found in Africa, Asia, and South America, and is called a viral hemorrhagic fever. Outbreaks tend to erupt without warning, and although they cause rapidly fatal diseases, the illnesses start out with ordinary flu symptoms--headache, fever, aches and pains, an occasional rash, diarrhea and vomiting. What causes Marburg Fever to become deadly, though, is the fact that about half of the victims who suffer from the flu-like symptoms then begin to bleed, both internally and externally. What often follows is a breakdown of vital organs like the heart, kidneys, and liver from the fluid that is leaking out of the blood vessels.

Sounds horrifically painful, doesn't it? It is, and although right now it's only been found in the aforementioned countries and has come to an end, it could arise again, and even be spread to other parts of the globe. One of the most important things I learned by reading DEADLY INVADERS is how easily a virus, whether one that is air-born or one that can only be contracted through direct contact of bodily fluids, can be spread. With the ease of travel from one country to another, and with short incubation periods for viruses with little or no obvious symptoms in the beginning, it is not unlikely that an epidemic of some sort will one day spread across the Earth.

Besides Marburg Fever, there are six other diseases profiled in DEADLY INVADERS: Avian (Bird) Flu, HIV and AIDS, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, West Nile Disease, SARS, and Monkeypox. Each virus has specific symptoms, and none have cures. It is up to medical professionals across the world to work together to find vaccines for these diseases, so that
we're prepared in the face of eventual outbreaks.

This is definitely an informative book. If you've ever wondered about the likelihood of outbreaks of Bird Flu or West Nile Disease in the United States, or if diseases that thrive in third-world countries will ever be a threat to those in the developed world, you need to read DEADLY INVADERS. The threat is there, and it's up to all of us to get ready.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"

I was at the American Library Conference in New Orleans scoping out various publisher booths when I found myself at the Kingfisher location in possession of a nice hot pink non-fiction tome with the vibrant words, "Deadly Invaders" popping out of the cover. I knew that the New York Times had started publishing books for children, much as National Geographic has, but this was the first of its kind I'd had a chance to handle for myself. So for three or four nights in a row, I used this title to cautiously immerse myself in every dangerous virus outbreak from AIDS to SARS. The book is a fascinating look at how our ever-shrinking world may someday face a pandemic of the worst possible nature. For the kid that wants some info on deadly diseases that kill with no cure, I can't think of a better book to hand them. Just don't be tossing this title casually to any child prone to apocalyptic fears.

Author Denise Grady is a science reporter for The New York Times and has been so since 1998. In the eight years since she joined the Gray Lady, Ms. Grady has had the mixed honor of being in a position to learn as much as possible about some of the deadliest diseases in the world. Grady begins "Deadly Invaders" with in-depth study of Marburg Fever. To study the effects of this viral hemorrhagic disease, Grady traveled to Luanda, Angola to view the doctors working in the area. She then traveled to the much smaller and, to be frank, filthier city of Uige and the province of the same name. Grady recounts both these experiences with the professionalism of a true reporter, then fills out the book with summaries of six other deadly diseases. The effect is simultaneously devastating and gripping (in a way that differs not too greatly from watching an informative but nasty car wreck on the highway).

To be honest with you, I had never even heard of the Marburg Fever until I read Grady's account of it. Now that I have, I am under the distinct impression that it is going to kill me. No no, I'm kidding you. In fact, if anything, Grady's story comes across as a rather hopeful piece on the competence of contemporary doctors. Sure there have been outbreaks and deaths all over the world from various viral amalgamations, but not one has ever turned into a full-blown pandemic. This is, to my mind, nothing short of amazing. Take, for example, the book's account of SARS. Providing a particularly useful little map o' infection, the reader is able to see how a single traveler from China managed to infect four hundred people when he stayed at a single hotel. Yet for all this, we are not currently walking around with masks on our faces. Well done us.

And well done, Ms. Grady. Her writing in this title for youth never patronizes her younger readers. She has the singular ability to make complex ideas and issues simple without being simplistic. In the book's introduction, for example, she is able to synthesize the "Why should I care about viral outbreaks?" question into a succinct chunk: "Whether or not you believe that a humanitarian responsibility exists, there is also a practical, perhaps selfish reason for the rest of the world to try to stop or prevent epidemics in seemingly remote places: nowhere is truly remote anymore." Most admirable, however, is Grady's ability to humanize a story of a dehumanizing disease. When she visits a clinic in Angola to follow the trials of a man in an isolation unit, she learns that his family provides food for him and brings it to the doctors. Unfortunately, all food must be placed in plastic bags, an act that would be considered humiliating in Angola. At one point we hear of a family who has placed the bagged food in a box contained within a beautifully embroidered piece of cloth. And then the man dies alone and without getting to see any of his relatives anyway. The reader hurts to hear this, but is able to stand outside the situation as well. I also enjoyed Ms. Grady's willingness to talk about how she had to convince The New York Times that this was a story worth reporting in the first place. And considering that that's their name on the cover, this comes across as mildly gutsy.

For kids, the book even has small tidbits of info that provide fascinating back-up to the larger story. At one point we learn that there is a theory that viruses are "scraps of rogue genetic material that somehow escaped people, animals, plants, or bacteria." Or how about the fact that many of this awful viral diseases come from eating monkeys? In May of 2002 more than seven hundred primate carcasses were tested for disease and they, "found SIV infection in 20 percent of them. More than thirty primate species were known to carry strains of SIV." Oog. And ick.

We would be amiss if we did not offer kudos to Anthony Cutting's book design as well. What could easily have ended up as a dull dry text punctuated by the occasional photograph becomes instead a lively book with the visual equivalent of sound bites popping up all the time. Maps, full-page info boxes, and mock index cards pepper the pages in such a way that the eye is forever flitting from interesting factoid to the main text. The color photographs, Source Notes, Bibliography of articles organized by date (with additional notes on books of particular interest), Internet Resources (thank heaven), and Index are enough to assure any non-fiction junkie that Ms. Grady knows from whence she writes.

Ms. Grady writes this book for a teen readership, but I feel "Deadly Invaders" will garner just as much interest from science-hungry tweens as well. It's a riveting account of those diseases we hear about all the time in the news, but in a way that makes them feel immediate and pressing. The hypochondriac kids you know may not be able to handle what Ms. Grady has to say, but for anyone else this book is a window into a world that our future scientists may someday wish to conquer. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I shall go and wash my hands.

This book presents different aspects of epidemiology, and virology in each of the chapters. The author and many contributors are THE best people in their field and this book offers a rare opportunity in that their comments are in one easily readable volume. I have spent much time looking for the same information presented here, my research always revealed that the contributors to this volume are the prominent figures for their respective chapters. An excellent book, great value for money

I finished reading this fascinating book, and I have highly recommend this book to some of my collegues in the biotech industry. Gives incredible insight for which many people would find interesting and thought provoking. Also, I would someday like to contact the author and compliment him and maybe ask one or two questions about the book.

"This is a fascinating book written by some of the leading authors in their fields...Overall, the reader will be rewarded by the depth and comprehensiveness of the book's chapters."
- Lowell S. Young, Director, Kuzell Institute for Arthritis and Infectious Diseases at California Pacific Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA

"The authors of the chapters in this book have done a superb job of assembling and critically analyzing a wealth of data on pathogens that continue to pose major problems for mankind in the 21st century. This book provides an excellent reference for students, clinicians, microbiologists, and clinical investigators who are interested in some of the world's most important pathogens."
- Robert C. Moellering, Jr., M.D., Herrman L. Blumgart Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Physician-in-Chief and Chairman, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Both of the editors and sixteen additional contributing authors have a variety of experiences. The 218 page book has two parts and ten chapters. Part 1, Issues, contains four chapters. Chapter 1 is Community-Based Research: An Introduction. It identifies that community-based research as scientific inquiry that involves human subjects, takes place in the community, has a prevention focus, is population-centered, involves a partnership with the community, takes a multidisciplinary approach while the participants who may have little motivation regarding the study continue their usual activities. It provides some history of public health, new paradigms, levels of community participation, community organizing, principles for working with communities and of community-based research, and cultural competence. Chapter 2, Assessing and Applying Community- Based Research, focuses of preventive services, specifically vaccinations. Chapter 3, Public Health Ethics and Community-Based Research is about African-American subjects and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Chapter 4, The View From the Community, addresses the Hispanic and Asian cultures and community assets such as churches, traditional networks, opinion leaders, community health workers, and community organizations. The fact that health professionals need to become more nontraditional in their approaches to communities and cultures where they are considered outsiders is noted.

Part 2 is about methods including surveys and descriptive studies. Analytical-observation studies include cross-sectional, case-control, and cohort. Experimental studies that allow randomized manipulation include clinical trials, community intervention trials, laboratory experiments, and evaluation studies. Cross sectional studies and related nonprobability and probability sampling (including simple random, systematic selection, stratified, cluster, and multistage) are discussed. Behavioral risk factors, qualitative methods including interviewing, focus groups, observations, case studies, document reviews and the related data analysis are discussed. The book is concluded with research related to AIDS prevention and cardiovascular risk-prevention. There are tables, figures, boxes, or appendix in some chapters. Chapters usually end with a summary, discussion, or conclusion and references. The book is indexed. This is a good book for teachers, students, and community members involved in community-based health research.

This document is a report written by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences. It highlights the 13 current reasons for the emergence and re-emergence of microbial disease. My only problem is whith this book is that it didn't highlight the "Lack of political will" chapter enough. Most of the other 12 reasons could be controlled if we as a globe could overcome the "Lack of political will". Read this book, be alarmed and talk to your government. This is GLOBAL health we're talking about!

Modern science has long searched for a way of eliminating infectious disease - but new diseases, new bacterial immunities to treatments, and new agents of delivery have thwarted these goals. Norbert Gualde reveals the process of controlling and predicting epidemic outbreaks, using the history of epidemics to chart the struggles of medicine against both new and old diseases. Two theories describe the emergence of infectious agents: Gualde forges a median path between them in suggesting interactions between man and micro-organisms will create epidemics on the same scale as past experience despite modern medicine's advancements. An intriguing study any college-level health student will want to ponder.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I first read this book shortly after it came out about 12 years ago. I was so angry and scared after realizing the real situation for global disease and treatments or lack thereof. I recently was sorting through books to sell and came across this again. I reread it and became even more angry and frustrated and scared. I think this should be a required text for high school history/science. I think the American public has become immune to any kind of "wake up call" as regards our environment and health issues. We are still living with the colossal failures and screw ups of the Reagan years, now compounded and magnified by the GWB years.

There is not room to detail the reasons one should read this book. We have already had plagues in this country, which have been basically hidden from the public. We allowed the CDC to be gutted by the Reagan administration and who knows were it currently stands. Ronald Reagan can take credit for millions of AID's related deaths because of his blissful and willful ignorance.

Reading this book is a necessity and will benefit you in many but scary ways.

In nearly 700 well researched pages, Laurie Garrett has managed to turn a usually dry subject into a gripping tale of disease-warriors combating humanity's oldest enemies. This is only the tip of the iceberg for any respectable medical professional, but for the lay-reader this book contains a wealth of information that is readable and easily digestible.

By turning topics like the Ebola virus, Genetic Engineering and Toxic Shock Syndrome into an easy read, Laurie Garrett transforms complex medical topics into fascinating chunks of information like a true wizard. A must read for anyone with the slightest interest in medicine and science.

This non-fiction book inspired my debut Political Thriller - Patient Zero - about the next avian flu pandemic, which the world is truly bracing for.

Patient Zero - Official ABNA Entrant

If you liked The Hot Zone, you will love this book. The Hot Zone told the scary story of a variant of Ebola that turned out to be harmless to humans. The Coming Plague narrates the history of little-known but lethal diseases such as Machupo, Ebola, Four-Corners Hantavirus, Lassa Fever, Marburg and others. In each of these cases, the list of victims was relatively small, but the onset and progress of these illnesses were frightful. Garrett examines how "disease cowboys" worked backward to patient zero, followed the course of the illness, discovered its means of transmission and identified each disease. In a few cases, the original vector could not be found, despite a careful search. How even medical professionals react when they find out that they too, have the disease is a fascinating psychological study. Often they go into a state of denial, like the researcher in New York who came down with Lassa after studying some samples. At the other extreme was one doctor, who, fearing he was exposed to Ebola, hit the bottle hoping that alcohol would kill the virus. To his relief it turned out to be measles.

A large amount of this book is devoted to AIDS. Garrett details its emergence in the early 80s. She is critical of the government's slow response, which she says was partly due to the insistence of some in the Reagan administration that since it affected only homosexual men it was beneath concern. On the other hand, she suggests that the rampant promiscuity of some members of the gay community didn't help matters either. While there was enough blame to go around, the real heroes were a handful of careful physicians who noted some bizarre symptoms among their gay patients and brought this medical condition to the CDC and the world's attention. While this book presents an excellent history of the emergence of AIDS in both America and Africa, Garrett's information on AIDS is now unfortunately out-of-date.

The author presents more chapters on antibiotic-resistant TB, Legionnaire's Disease, the problem with overdosing farm animals with antibiotics and even Toxic Shock Syndrome. At one point, I bogged down with information overload. But during Garrett's chapters on hemorrhagic and other exotic fevers, this book is difficult to put down.

This book, when it came out, pointed out the coming problems in our medical system like antibiotic resistance, long before it became common knowledge. But it also suggests that as we continue to transform our environment, new plagues and diseases will continue to threaten our existence.
My only criticism of the book is that it was a difficult read, because it is very densely packed with information. This book requires patience to read, but it is well worth it.

After finishing this book you will never read a newspaper the same way again. I am amazed, and a little scared, at how much of what Laurie Garrett wrote in 1995 has come to pass in 2007. Her story about the "disease cowboys" who track the causes of unexplained epidemics in the remote corners of the world is both absorbing and eye-opening. And it has helped me to see disturbing trends in current news stories that I would have missed had I not read The Coming Plague.

When it first appeared, I avoided this book because it seemed depressing and alarmist. In the years since I have had occasion to work on some international communications projects and in the process came to be interested in global public health. Once that happened, reading Garrett's book was essential. She is one of the most informed individuals writing on global public health in the US today.

Amazingly, although the material is sobering and sometimes truly scary, the book is not in the least depressing. It often reads like an adventure story. If you like detective puzzles, you'll be drawn into Garrett's tales of Ebola turning up in Reston, Virginia, and Marburg virus being unwittingly spread by do-gooder missionaries in the Congo.

Irony abounds. It turns out that much of the good we thought we were doing in the developing world was exactly the wrong thing. Garrett relates that many development projects and purported medical "advances" served to promote the evolution of drug resistant bacteria and viruses, while also raising wildly unrealistic expectations for the eradication of disease among the public and the medical establishment. The results are the return of diseases we thought were gone for good, such as TB and -- get this -- bubonic plague, and they are even harder to treat this time around because the microbes are resistent to many antibiotics and drug therapies.

Don't be daunted by the 700+ pages of this book. It is a great read and definitely worth the time you will invest in educating yourself about the the impact of human beings and our technological development on the ecology of microbial environments. I recommend The Coming Plague most highly.

This book definitely leaves you kind of worried, showing you some of the deadliest pathogens known today. This microscopic world of bacteries and viruses has proven difficult to deal with in latest years due to misuse of antibiotics and the creation or formation of new strains like Influenza, a virus capable of pandemic. Thing is, as the author explain, there are several ways to be infected, airborne, by food, mosquitoes, even bioterrorism, a situation that makes you think if your country is prepared to keep it under control. The book read easily and softly, especially good for the layperson and in my case, awoke an interest to know more about it.

As a neophyte in the understanding of bacteria and infectious desease I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Knowing how fine a line we walk in our symbiotic relationship with bacteria is as frightening as it is fascinating. I belive this book should be required reading in schools.

When reading this expose I had to remember that Ms. Drexler is a medical reporter researcher, and as such there are areas of her research that may not have been done in depth...otherwise the book is easy reading... The author has much to say regarding new and emerging viruses and bacteria and their ability to penetrate the animal-human barrier. Doctors and researchers are baffled in their attempts to locate the culprits which were in some examples birds spreading germs that jumped to humans. The flaw was Ms Drexler's misses the mark on the origins of the aids virus, choosing instead the old dry tail of the natives ate the green monkey story - ergo, they got the virus. This did not take much work!!! As current evidence shows the problem runs much deeper.

After hearing Madeline Drexler speak at my university, I had to read this book. It is clear that Ms. Drexler has put forth a lot of effort toward producing a well-researched and well-written book. There are many quotes from professionals on the front lines of infection control, and there are many examples of normal people suffering from frightening and strange emerging infections.

Drexler's book offers a warning that we must focus on public health issues if we hope to avoid the tragedy that an agent such as a pandemic flu could cause. The book is filled with warnings about the overuse of antibiotics and the inefficiency of public health beauracracy and lack of funding. I hope that more professionals and lay people read this book and heed its message.

Madeline Drexler's book is as frightening as she wants it to be. Secret Agents is a gripping, well-written fast read that should deeply frighten everyone on first glance. The subtitle is the menace of emerging infections but it could almost be changed to the menace of everything. There seems little escape from the possible scenarios she clearly presents (and this clarity is definately one of the book's strengths as she makes bio-science quite understandable for the layperson.) The chapter on the West Nile Virus that begins the book is particularly exciting and will the hook the reader immediately. If one pauses to look at the actual numbers, the book is somewhat less frightening as the numbers of deaths are always substantially below many of the doom-sayers' predictions, although she will repeatedly tell the reader this may not always be so. A fascinating book for our times.

Horowitz does a great job showing what horrible things governments and corporations are capable of, either deliberately or by accident. Unfortunately, he appears to have no understanding of the biology and evolution of viruses. He just picks snippets of information out of context from the incredibly vast volume of research, in order to support his theory. If you really want to learn about the origin of emerging viruses, and what we need to worry about for the future, read Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett's book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. It gets the science right, with extensive references for further information on every point.

I applaud the courage of Leonard Horowitz in exposing the truth about what the government has been up to for a long time. As a researcher I have uncovered many things that are almost too ugly to be believed. There are those out there wondering why anyone inside the government or out would do such hideous things. I strongly recommend the readers of this review to read the book "Bringers of the Dawn" by Barbara Marciniak. This book may also be hard to believe but the pieces of the puzzle will come together when you read this book. But hang on to your seats. If you also purchase the book "Power vs. Force" by Dr. David Hawkins, you will find a technique that will show you how to prove or disprove anything in either of the above books (or anything else for that matter). The answers are out there. We just have to keep searching.

I didn't like this book. For one thing, if it were non-fiction, then why all the dialogue between him and his wife, which was more or less fiction, since who could remember that kind of detail all that time?

For another, there were significant omissions, like the biowarfare lab on Plum Island in New York, lyme disease, West Nile, mycoplasma, Royal Rife, Morgellon's, and a host of others. Not to mention the more convincing evidence that AIDS is from swine not cattle.

He also totally mis-understood milieu interior, which doesn't refer to political climate but the health of the host, affecting whether or not he will catch any illness he is exposed to, which was huge in the history of vaccine development.

Finally there is very convincing evidence that prion disease is environmental - copper deficiency in the face of manganese poisoning, which has been known since Andre Voisin wrote "Soil, Grass, and Cancer".

Interestingly, the bad reviewers of this book have only convinced me of its accuracy. None of their criticisms strike me as being sound. A few of them criticize the book for scaring people, to which I would say that I only wish back in 1932, during my lifetime, someone would have, in a similar fashion, scared people about the Tuskegee Experiment. I also wish back in the 1700s someone would have scared the native americans before the British deliberately distributed smallpox infected blankets to them, killing off half of the tribes!

As to the argument that man did not know how to create the ebola virus in the 50s, the critics are not appropriately answering the scenarios raised by Dr. Horowitz. Specifically, Dr, Horowitz spends a great deal of time discussing the possiblities of:

1) Careless "professionals" allowing contamination from existing virus samples.

2) An existing virus, from one host, from which another host becomes infected, with the result being that the virus mutates in the new host to a variation of the original virus, a mutated virus for which not only can we not create, we also don't have a cure for (as in the case of AIDS).

3) A criminally misguided government official, someone such as, say, a Henry Kissinger who we know touted the the benefits of population control, who might have sent signals to outfits such as the CIA whose job it is to be paranoid to the extreme and who could obtain funding for top secret virus research for which the "experts" writing reviews here would know none of the details of what man was, or was not, capable of creating in a lab.

This is a must read for any sane person who recognizes the foolishness of sticking your head in the sand to avoid seeing the lion charging at your butt.

Please read the science on this subject before becoming a "true believer" in this theory. Detailed study of the sequences of simian immunodeficiency viruses from many species of monkeys and chimps, compared to the sequences of viral samples from humans with HIV-1 or HIV-2 clearly show that Horowitz's theory is not consistent with the data. When in doubt I suggest going with the facts not speculation.

When a theory does not match the data - move on.

A good start point to enter the scientific literature is a review article "AIDS as a Zoonosis: Scientific and Public Health Implications", Hahn BH, Shaw GM, De Cock KM, Sharp PM, published in Science, 28 January 2000, Vol 287:607-614. Just go to the National Library of Medicine website at www.pubmed.gov and enter Hahn BH, Shaw GM, De Cock KM, Sharp PM then click on related articles to access the scientific literature.