Pandemic
Subtitle: tracking contagions, from cholera to Ebola and beyond
By: Sonia Shah
Edition: First edition.
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 271
ISBN-13: 9780374122881
Subjects: Public health surveillance; Epidemiology; Communicable diseases; History
Description: Scientists agree that a pathogen is likely to cause a global pandemic in the near future. But which one? And how? Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either newly emerged or reemerged. Ninety percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. It could be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug, or something completely new. While we can't know which pathogen will cause the next pandemic, by unraveling the story of how pathogens have caused pandemics in the past, we can make predictions about the future. Here, prizewinning science journalist Sonia Shah interweaves history, original reportage, and personal narrative to explore the origins of contagions, drawing parallels between cholera, one of history's most deadly and disruptive pandemic-causing pathogens, and the new diseases that stalk humankind today. To reveal how a new pandemic might develop, Shah tracks each stage of cholera's dramatic journey, from its emergence in the South Asian hinterlands as a harmless microbe to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world, all the way to its latest beachhead in Haiti. Along the way she reports on the pathogens now following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers coming out of China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. By delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases, Pandemic reveals what the next global contagion might look like--and what we can do to prevent it.--Adapted from dust jacket.

"Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera-- one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens-- and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages [221]-253) and index.
Table of contents: title: Cholera's child : the microbes' comeback; title: The jump : crossing the species barrier at wet markets, pig farms, and South Asian wetlands; title: Locomotion : the global dissemination of pathogens through canals, steamships, and jet airplanes; title: Filth : the rising tide of feculence, from nineteenth-century New York City to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the factory farms of south China; title: Crowds : the amplification of epidemics in the global metropolis; title: Corruption : private interests versus public health, or, How Aaron Burr and the Manhattan Company poisoned New York City with cholera; title: Blame : cholera riots, AIDS denialism, and vaccine resistance; title: The cure : the suppression of John Snow and the limits of biomedicine; title: The revenge of the sea : the cholera paradigm; title: The logic of pandemics : the lost history of ancient pandemics; title: Tracking the next contagion : reimagining our place in a microbial world.