Customer Reviews

Microbe: Are We Ready for the Next Plague?

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Microbe is a fascenating book that discusses the ways a disasterous disease outbreak could occur both as a result of human actions (such as terrorism) as well as from the many natural ways that diseases (often new diseases) end up infecting humans (as well as the disasterous effects of a public panic that could occur from real or imagined bio-terror attacks). The emphasis in the book is on the value of early detection that "something strange is going on", and on the important role doctors, nurses, and vets all play in disease monitoring (many diseases start as animal diseases before infecting humans). Sadly, the current public health situation results in very poor early detection of potentially serious diseases, and poor communication between all the different people involved in public health - problems that are easily rectified in the internet age.

The authors provide a couple of realistic scenarios that could occur, and discuss what would happen under the present public health monitoring situation, and how things could be radically different with simple improvements in disease monitoring. The authors also provide a lot of interesting information on the different diseases, the wide variety of treatment tactics (often there is no treatment - you just have to prevent it from spreading), how vaccines are made, and a discription of some of the serious outbreaks that have occured over the last 30 or so years.

This book is a highly recomended wake up call to get america to improve its public health infrastructure.

Microbe gives you a chilling journey which explores *multiple* stories; SARS, Hantavirus, West Nile...The chapter on the Soviet bioweapons program breeding even more lethal kinds of smallpox is worth the price of the book alone.

This was'nt a dry science book but something with a strong story that propels the reader through each chapter. If you like The Hot Zone you'll like this as it's a surprisingly easy read.

You may be interested to read a review of this book by Peter B. Jahrling (you'll recognize the name if you read The Hot Zone). You'll find his review on the CDC website, here:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no11/05-1084.htm

For those who are not familiar with PB Jahrling, here's a press release summarizing his accomplishments:

http://www.usamriid.army.mil/press%20releases/jahrling_press_release.pdf

From an evolutionary point of view, homo sapiens sapiens is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the intelligence that lies within growth. You watch your own child (or self, for that matter)learn, adapt, reach out beyond your boundaries, comprehend, and find your way through thousands of obstacles and lessons everyday.

Why would the microscopic world be different?

Michael Bellomo looks through a microscope to discribe for us the various dramas that are unfolding during the lifetimes of the germs that he choosees to speak of. See, your child has 18 years to grow up (28 in the case of my brother...); however, a microbe can grow, mutate, and adapt to your bodily defenses within years given the right conditions.

Scarier than Freddie or Jason. So what can we do?

The authors here leave us with the most up-to-date information that they have available in order to get us started in thinking of our world as vulnerable. It's not to scare you into inaction; rather, it asks you to question what part we can play in creating a balance with our natural world, or else it will create a balance that favours itself.

And the more educated we are, the more we will be able to protect our children, our selves, and our communities.

"Microbe" is a good place to start.

Alan Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo have written an excellent book, one that should be easily understood by laymen, on microbes and their effect on our world. The information includes, but is not limited to, information on smallpox to avian influenza and anthrax and the importance of surveillance tracking of unusual disease occurances in the world (but most specifically the United States).

I did not find the book sensationalist at all. The chapters were broken up logically, building upon the ones before it so that at the end of the book you understood the science of epidemiology, as well as the obstacles that MUST be overcome prior to the next pandemic.

Personally, the most surprising and informative section to me was on Mad Cow Disease, which explored the discovery of the role that prions have in the disease - and the contamination that is so difficult to eradicate. Imagine this - an autoclave cannot sterilize a scalpel used on a Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease patient! It was absolutely chilling.

I urge that you, as well as (most emphatically) every Public Health Official, school nurse, physician, veterinarian, pharmacist (essentially ALL health workers), read this book.

Are we ready for the next plague? It could come through variants of West Nile, SARS, or other modern diseases - or it could come from nowhere; and the U.S. public health system is vastly under-equipped to respond to a major plague. That's the message of Microbe: Are We Ready For The Next Plague? A physician/physicist and lawyer combine talents to expose conditions conducive to major biological crises, from gaps in communication and information chains to lack of containment plans. Promising models for networks and vaccines are also analyzed. A gripping assessment of the world's ability to withstand a major plague.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find that 'Microbe' was very easy to read. It moved quickly and was written in an understandable way, so rare for books of this kind, although it slightly bogged a little when the SYRIS system was being explained. It picked up again and ended with something to think about. The best thing about this book is that you can learn something important without feeling like you are. It reads like a novel.

Well-researched, covering emerging microbial unknowns and previous microbial agents that are making a re-appearance. Emphasis on how ill-prepared we are to deal with rapidly changing bacterial, viral and biological agents able to mutate quickly, leaving us at odds with how to quanantine and treat large populations at risk. Vaccines take far too long to develop, and in a global community, a visit by Avian influenza could be devastating. Two very interesting scenarios show the scope of two different pathogens, and their ability to impact not only health and the health care system, but to impact much of the infrastructure essential to fighting contagious disease -- lack of coordinated first responders, impact on energy, police, and countering the fear factor. As a medical writer, this is one of the best books I've read this year. G. Smith, Michigan.

A thorough examination and historical review of microbiological attacks on the human species.

Zelicoff and Bellomo take you around the globe on a scary tour of some of the world's most insidious infectious outbreaks, pandemics and epidemics and they clearly illustrate how unprepared we really are for the next one to creep in unannounced. Be prepared to be scared!

They take several examples of diseases and infectious outbreaks and break them into discernable steps of how they progress and explain things at a level that most reader can easily grasp.

With great relief I read on to see that there is a way to track, watch and quickly identify the next SARS or West Nile infestation using, of all things, relatively simple technology to gather statistics and help health care professionals around the world.

***This book is a MUST READ*** for ALL public health personnel from the TOP down and is also an excellent insight into the workings of these nasty bugs that can wreak havoc if they are allowed to get traction due to our slowness in identification.

This thought provoking book is a must read for anyone with concerns about or responsibility for early detection and containment of either emerging infectious diseases or the management of an epidemic caused by bioterrorism.

In this delightfully pithy volume, the authors manage to interweave the recounting of past public health system failures with some good introductory science and some important insights into the "clinical thought process". They conclude with straightforward recommendations for future actions.

The authors do a nice job explaining the nuances of prions and DNA vaccine and make a compelling case for strengthening the relationships between the public health, human and animal medical communities. The authors provide brief insights into several recent failures of the public health to detect and contain emerging infectious diseases before they became integrated into the nation's eco-systems. In recounting outbreaks of West Nile virus, cryptosporidium and bovine spongiform encephalopathy they raise a series of "what if" questions that should stimulate the reader to further readings.

The story of the Aralesk smallpox outbreak is in itself worth the price of the read. That relatively unknown smallpox outbreak caused by Soviet live agent testing, for once and for all, lays to rest some of the myths about the Soviets work to weaponize smallpox.

The book contains two illustrative bioterrorist scenarios, each of which is plausible and frighteningly realistic, and which by themselves make a compelling case for the nation's public health community to rapidly move to adopt a system of syndrome based disease surveillance.

It is those recurring discussions about the utility of syndrome-based surveillance that ultimately embody the book's central message. The clarity with which the authors discuss the strengths and weakness of the nation's current disease detection efforts and their shortfalls is refreshing and raises important policy issues. This book clearly illustrates the need for the nation to implement an emerging infectious diseases warning system that is syndrome-based rather than the one based on disease reporting. Hopefully, the public policy community as well as public health and clinical communities will read this book and act on its recommendations.

William D. Stanhope
Associate Director, Special Projects
Institute for Biosecurity
School of Public Health
Saint Louis University