[books 2010] The Coming Plague
Dec. 4th, 2010 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro75. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett
I've had this sitting around for years but kept avoiding it because I thought the science would be too difficult, and it's enormous. There's no getting around the size, but the science only gets mildly challenging towards the end.
It starts out as a scientific adventure story following the discovery of emerging tropical diseases such as Ebola and Bolivian haemorrhagic fever in the 1970s. This is, to me, the best bit. It follows with a brief story of the eradication of smallpox and attempts at eradicating other diseases. The last half or so is angry-making - the emergence of AIDS & the worldwide failure to do anything effective about it because of the people it initially infected; the "thirdworldization" of public health care pretty much everywhere, not just in the third world.
The thesis is not just that new diseases emerge as homo sapiens moves into parts of the world that were previously uninhabited or changes land use; but that microbes evolve faster and are always going to have the advantage. The only chance we have of coming out on top is robust public health policy & practice worldwide, which, at the time of writing (1994), was notably lacking throughout the world.
This book is excellent, and definitely more than worth the amount of effort required.
I've had this sitting around for years but kept avoiding it because I thought the science would be too difficult, and it's enormous. There's no getting around the size, but the science only gets mildly challenging towards the end.
It starts out as a scientific adventure story following the discovery of emerging tropical diseases such as Ebola and Bolivian haemorrhagic fever in the 1970s. This is, to me, the best bit. It follows with a brief story of the eradication of smallpox and attempts at eradicating other diseases. The last half or so is angry-making - the emergence of AIDS & the worldwide failure to do anything effective about it because of the people it initially infected; the "thirdworldization" of public health care pretty much everywhere, not just in the third world.
The thesis is not just that new diseases emerge as homo sapiens moves into parts of the world that were previously uninhabited or changes land use; but that microbes evolve faster and are always going to have the advantage. The only chance we have of coming out on top is robust public health policy & practice worldwide, which, at the time of writing (1994), was notably lacking throughout the world.
This book is excellent, and definitely more than worth the amount of effort required.
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Date: 2010-12-05 09:07 am (UTC)