animal infections and the next human pandemic

“People and gorillas, horses and duikers and pigs, monkeys and chimps and bats and viruses,” Quammen writes. “Spillover” is less public health warning than ecological affirmation: these crossovers force us to uphold “the old Darwinian truth (the darkest of his truths, well known and persistently forgotten) that humanity is a kind of animal” - with a shared fate on the planet. All these factors, therefore, in different ways favor the spread of diseases and increase the chances of new future spillovers with pathogens still unknown to the human species but present in nature, just waiting for the right 'opportunity' to 'make the leap' in humans.

In the various chapters of the book, the author dwells on the analysis of a specific pathogen, starting from its discovery and studies on it: the Hendra virus in the first chapter the Ebola virus in the second the mathematical study of epidemics at the same time as the spread of malaria in the third SARS in the fourth bacterial zoonosis in the fifth chapter (Q fever, psittacosis and Lyme disease) the study of viral transmissibility from animal to man with the case study of herpes B in monkeys and hepadnaviruses from bats in the sixth and seventh chapters HIV in the eighth chapter and finally some considerations on the evolution of epidemics in relation to the contribution that human activities have in the spread of zoonosis.Īmong the human activities, the author identifies some criticisms that increasingly favor the spread of epidemics, including deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats that increase contacts between wild animal species and man, pollution, the overpopulation of some areas that brings millions of people into contact in relatively very confined spaces, the possibility of ever faster and cheaper air travel that favor the possibility of spreading diseases in distant places, and the intensive in contact with billions of animals with the consequent risk of animal epidemics that can be transmitted to humans. Upon its release, Spillover received positive reviews. The book, written in narrative form, tells through the personal experiences of the author, who interviewed numerous pathologists and virologists globally to trace the evolution of some of the major pathogens that have affected the human species following a species leap ( spillover), a natural process by which an animal pathogen evolves and becomes able to infect, reproduce and transmit within the human species, in a process called zoonosis. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is a book written in 2012 by American writer David Quammen.

Animal infections and the next human pandemic