Customer Reviews

Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An engaging primer on six emerging diseases that have tormented the world recently: (1) Mad Cow Disease, (2) HIV/AIDS, (3) Salmonella DT104, (4) Lyme Disease, (5) Nile Virus, and (6) SARS. Walters' premise is that we have radically changed the environment and thus we are reaping the results of our own actions via plagues. Trained as a veterinarian, Walters sees all of the above plagues as the interactions between animals and our disruption of the environment. He states, "Intensive modern agriculture, clear-cutting of forests, global climate changes, decimation of many predators that once kept disease-carrying smaller animals in check, and other environmental changes have all contributed to the increase [of epidemics]." He also mentions how the increase of global travel has contributed to the spread diseases (i.e. SARS and HIV/AIDS).

The book is a short, (156 pages) quick read, and best suited for those outside of the medical community who want to know more about any, or all, of these plagues. If you have a good grasp of epidemiology, and are well-read, you will probably find the subject matter remedial. Also, Walters' treatment of the six plagues is uneven. His last chapter on SARS is a quick gloss over and disappointing in comparison to his more captivating treatment of the preceding five plagues. Recommended 3.5 stars.

I sped through this book on a plane ride. It is a quick read, but well researched and wonderfully written. It is so scary how the way we treat the environment actually comes back to us...and effects our health! The chapter on mad cow disease is particularly disturbing. The author's hopefullness is reassuring though; he believes that we can slow the tide of infection, by protecting and restoring our "ecological wholeness."

"What threads we silently break; what voices we still. By what grace, I wondered, have we been kept so well by what we have abused for so long." (p. 95)

This expression by science writer and journalism professor Mark Jerome Walters was inspired by a walk in an old growth forest, and is in reference to the planet's ecology. It is indicative of his reflective and eloquent style.

It was thought not so many years ago that we had infectious diseases nearly under control and it would be only a matter of (short) time before they were eliminated as important causes of human morbidity. How naive such a pronouncement seems today!

The six modern "plagues" that Walters writes about are mad cow disease, HIV/AIDS, antibiotic-resistant salmonella, Lyme disease, the four-corners hantavirus, and West Nile virus. There is an Epilogue in which he discusses SARS and mentions avian flu, which is making headline news today as I write this. Walters's argument in each of these cases is that these diseases have come to prominence because of something we humans have done.

In the case of mad cow disease we have been mixing remnants from slaughtered cows and sheep in with their feed, including brain and nervous tissue parts that contain the prions responsible for the disease.

In the case of HIV/AIDS we have been clearing forests in the African jungles, and to feed the loggers have increased the traffic in bushmeat resulting in a commingling of humans and wild simians providing an opportunity for the virus to jump from apes to people.

In the case of Salmonella typhimurium DT104, it is our feeding antibiotics to farm animals that has allowed the antibiotic-resistant strain to develop.

Lyme disease, Walters argues is the result of our encroachment on forests that have been depleted of their natural variety of species with the result that the mice and deer that harbor the ticks that are the vectors for Lyme disease appear in unnaturally disproportionate numbers especially following seasons of acorn abundance.

A similar overabundance of mice in the Southwestern part of the US following El Nino years of heavy rains leads to more mice eating more pine nuts resulting in more human deaths from the hantavirus carried by the mice.

In the case of West Nile virus, it is the international traffic in birds that has allowed the virus, native to the Nile River in Egypt to get on planes and come to the US and other places in the world where indigenous mosquitos bite the birds and then bite native species and humans. Or, it is the mosquitos themselves who catch the planes and travel anywhere in the world, their cache of virus stowed inside their bodies.

Walters writes eloquently of these diseases and the tragedies they are causing. His purpose is to increase public knowledge about what we are doing to the environment and how that disturbance is wrecking havoc with the long establish ecosystems, and--like a tornado among forest litter--is causing pathogens that normally would not come into contact with humans, to literally fly into the air and be presented at our doorsteps.

Walters does not include drug-resistant tuberculosis (although he mentions it), which is even more of a threat to human health than some of the diseases above, but if he had, the story would have been similar. In a world in which a person or a pathogen can get on a plane and be just about anywhere else in the world in a matter of hours is a world in which infectious disease can spread and trade genetic material as if by design. We are the designers of this morbid mix, nurturing exponentially increased chances for pathogens to mutate into ever more deadly strains while foolishly wasting our antibiotics in support of profit margins for poultry and meat conglomerates.

Walters recalls the first waves of epidemic disease that visited humankind beginning with the agricultural revolution some 10,000 years ago, and then how the trade between the new civilizations ushered in a new wave of epidemics about 2,500 years ago, followed by the horrific spread of disease during the age of exploration following the Columbian voyages. He now sees us "entering a fourth phase of epidemics, spawned by an unprecedented scale of ecological and social change." (p. 9)

Because Walters writes so well, and because he is such a passionate spokesperson for the fact that we are part of the planet's ecology and not above its logic, and because the next "ecodemic" is just around the corner, this is an important book that deserves a large readership. Sooner or later, a new strain of a virus or other pathogen is going to attack humans with a virulence to equal or exceed that of any plague of the past. We may have no defense until the disease has run its course, and so it is prevention that we must depend on.

Bottom line: eloquently-written and as timely as the evening news.

This year it's the West Nile virus that's killing birds, horses and people for the first time where I live in Northern California. In the past year we've read about SARS appearing in China and jumping to cities around the world, about Mad Cow disease showing up here in the U.S., in Canada and in Japan, about the threat of a global flu epidemic, and of course we're all aware of the vast AIDS epidemic which continues to penetrate new populations in the industrialized world and which is devastating much of Africa.

Veterinarian Mark Walters does a very readable job of discerning a common thread that ties together these and other modern plaques. He demonstrates that they are not simply random natural events, but are all intimately tied to human activities. The strange infectious proteins that cause Mad Cow disease would not have created an epidemic if farmers hadn't gotten used to feeding cattle the ground-up by-products of other cows. HIV almost certainly spread from a primate reservoir to humans through the butchering and ingestion of bush meat, a growing practice that could easily be the source of future plagues. The deadly bacteria that are becoming increasing resistant to our armamentarium of antibiotics are goaded along this path by the use of enormous quantities of antibiotics in raising animals. Walters traces similar human factors for Lyme Disease, Hantavirus and the West Nile virus.

Readers who are interested in the plagues that have shaped human history, or in emerging diseases that have the potential to decimate the world today or in the near future will need to go beyond Walters' brief book. Still, I found it a helpful reminder of the extent to which we humans are influencing the course of events, even seemingly natural events like the outbreaks of new diseases. The more aware we are of the impacts of our activities, the more likely we are to be willing to modify them.

Robert Adler, author of Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome; and Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation.

I was required to read this as part of my Intro to Microbiology course. I kept it on my bookshelf because it quickly became an invaluable resource. While it is obvious the author knows a lot about the subject material, the book itself is fairly easy to read, and has almost the elements of a page-turner at times.

The best thing about this book is that it very clearly shows the causative relationship between human change to the environment and the diseases that are currently afflicting us, including Mad Cow and Lyme disease. Even now, three semesters after the class, I still find myself bringing up this book in conversations and using it as a reference for discussions about the evolution of microbes and antibiotic resistant superbugs.

If you have any interest in microbiology... if you are going into the medical field or any of the biological sciences... or if you are simply concerned about the effect that humans are having on the world at large, I highly recommend this book.

A valuable resource on environmental issues and modern diseases, Mark Jerome Walters' Six Modern Plagues is an overall enthralling read. The author is very qualified on the material of this book and even has time to incorporate a story line about the victims of the diseases making this book hard to put down. It is a fairly easy read and should be interesting for anyone who would like to learn about the environment. It also has much important information for someone studying biology, microbiology and any other in the field of biological or medical sciences.

The Six plagues written in this book are Mad Cow disease, HIV/AIDS, Salmonella DT104, Lyme disease, Hantavirus, and St.Louis Encephalitis. There is a clear connection shown in this book between the rapid spread of the diseases noted and changes in the environment caused by humans. The system of events for the victims was engaging and descriptive. The current situation is also noted at the end of each chapter so that older diseases can be looked upon to prevent future occurrences. Overall the book does contain some faults. It offers little hope for the future which makes it almost depressing to read. Also at times when describing the victim he includes too much medical data which might make it hard to follow for someone with no medical experience. The few faults that this book does have it makes up for making this an altogether great book that I recommend to anyone.

After reading this book no one will be able to make the argument that environmentalists are tree hugging crazies. This book deserves to be read widely.

I was turned on to the book by Mark's older brother, John Walters, who is executive director of the Lightstone Foundation, an environmental organization based in West Virginia. I was expecting a deary medical discourse for the mass consumer culture. What I got was a compelling read about critical problems facing and caused by our society.

Mark's writing style is very engaging and I had the pleasure of reading it straight through. The thoughts evoked are not terrifying or hysteric but rather give one the basis to weave the subject matter into our everyday decisions on how to live in an ever more complex and mobile world.

but I started reading it over summer way before the Fall semester even started. It's an easy read and very enjoyable. I hope the lecture I got it for is just as good.

What are the human stories behind the latest epidemics, and how are they closely related to human changes to the environment? Mark Jerome Walters uses Six Modern Plagues And How We Are Causing Them to outline the human influence in the course of such diseases as mad cow disease, monkeypox, West Nile virus and more. Walters narrowed focus on the human role in disease outbreaks makes for an involving coverage.