Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues [Paperback]

Frank Ryan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0316763063 | ISBN-13: 978-0316763066 | Publication Date: September 23, 1998 | Edition: 1

AIDS, Ebola, "mad cow disease," "flesh-eating" viruses...Today's newspapers are full of articles about new plagues & viruses. Where do these new viruses come from? Why do new plagues arise? Could there be - will there be - a lethal & incurable Virus X that spreads as easily as the common cold? The author, a renowned authority on diseases, presents a radical theory about the origin of deadly microbes in a book that takes us into the "hot zones" of today's most dangerous viral outbreaks, then into the research labs & hospitals where doctors & scientists are risking their lives trying to control them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Who needs Stephen King when there are such real-life horrors as those described in Dr. Frank Ryan's new book, Virus X to keep sleep at bay? Such exotic killers as Ebola and Necrotizing Fasciitis rub elbows with more familiar, if no less potentially lethal, diseases like tuberculosis as Dr. Ryan constructs a well-researched and well-written study that reads more like a thriller than a science book. The heroes are the doctors, nurses, and patients on the frontlines of plague as well as the researchers at laboratories such as the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia; the enemies are the myriad new viruses and virulent new strains of old viruses that are emerging in ever greater numbers as this century wears to a close.

Dr. Ryan's answer for why so many plagues are ravaging the world these days is simple but chilling: a huge explosion in population (6 billion people alive today versus 1.5 billion a century ago) and the resulting destruction of habitats has brought human beings into contact with aggressive viruses that once lived beyond our reach; our global transportation systems spread them. Virus X is not the first book to raise these issues, but it's a comprehensive one, making for gripping, frightening reading.

From Publishers Weekly

The first half of Ryan's second book (after The Forgotten Plague, 1993) is a riveting nonfiction medical thriller packed with information. Ryan, a British physician, details the methodologies and personalities behind the investigations into some of the world's most deadly viral epidemics, including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, Ebola fever and AIDS. The book's final nine chapters, however, are far less successful. In them, Ryan attempts to explain the ecological reasons for deadly outbreaks of plagues?but it quickly becomes apparent that he is not an ecologist. Not only does he subscribe to the outdated view of natural selection being red in tooth and claw, he fails to distinguish between process and outcome, referring to both natural selection and symbiosis as "natural laws" when, in fact, the latter comes about through the former. Additionally, he ventures over the poetic edge with such sentences as, "viruses have, through the empirics of evolution, become unwitting knights of nature, armed by evolution for furious genomic attack against her transgressors." The disappointing latter half of the book tarnishes but doesn't completely overshadow the earlier quality and excitement of what might have been another Hot Zone but isn't. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; 1 edition (September 23, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316763063
• ISBN-13: 978-0316763066
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #644,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A frightening report, more pertinent than ever, June 12, 2003

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues (Paperback)

British science journalist and physician Frank Ryan covers a lot of ground in this extensively researched and engagingly written trek into the world of emerging viruses. These viruses, indigenous to disturbed areas of the world, particularly in the tropics, are now being sprung loose to threaten humankind.

The first third of the book covers the story of the "Four Corners" hantavirus that jumped from deer mice to humans with fatal effect in the southwestern United States in 1993. This is science journalism at its best.

In the next third of the book Ryan takes us to the jungles of Africa and traces the origin and effect of the horrendously brutal Ebola virus. Again he tells an engaging story with a pictorial vividness. One is amazed at the courage and dedication of the health care workers and medical scientists who risked their lives to treat the sick and dying and to find the source of the deadly disease.

At the beginning of the last third of the book, Ryan reprises what we know about HIV, its origins, its spread, the political and social stupidities involved in its spread, and the prospects for combating this terror. Again he makes the personalities and the nature of their work come to life. Then beginning with "Chapter Sixteen: The Aggressive Symbiont," Dr. Ryan discusses in general and theoretically the evolutionary nature of viruses, where they came from, why they exist and what we can expect from them in the future. Most pointedly he explores the possibility of a doomsday virus that is simultaneously as easily spread as influenza and as deadly as Ebola.

In a sense this part of the book, originally published in 1996, predicts the SARS outbreak, but does not stop there. Ryan argues persuasively that, because of increased international travel, because of increased disturbance of natural environments, especially equatorial forests, and because of lack of sufficient preparedness, we are in mortal danger from a horrendous pandemic caused by an emerging virus, a virus he dubs "Virus X."

Part of his argument comes from the realization that every species on the planet harbors viruses. Most of these viruses exist in the host in a relatively benign manner. Ryan believes that virus and host are in a symbiotic relationship that has developed over the eons. The host shelters the virus while the virus, when shed into the environment, attacks other species with a deadly ferocity that protects the ecological position of the host. He calls this virus the "aggressive symbiont." It is here that Ryan's thesis is somewhat controversial.

For my part I think it is better to explain the deadly ferocity of an emerging virus by observing that the virus is killing its new host not to protect the old one but because it has not yet fine tuned its relationship so as not to kill the new host. Also the new host has not yet developed mechanisms for dealing with the virus to prevent it from doing egregious harm. Yet, it is valuable to see the virus as an "aggressive symbiont." Clearly the viruses (and other diseases) of the African rain forests are one of the reasons, as Ryan points out--perhaps the most important reason--that those jungles are still standing. It is clear that the AIDS virus that jumped from chimpanzees to humans would, in the pre-modern world, have the long-term effect of keeping humans from successfully usurping their territory. Perhaps it is best to say that viruses help to maintain the existing ecology.

However, to resolve this controversy will require predictive scenarios and experiments by scientists in the field. We should have a better understanding (and perhaps some more precise terminology) a few years down the road. For more information on symbiotic relationships see Ryan's recent and very excellent, Darwin's Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection (2002). Another excellent book on a closely related subject is Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures (2000) by Carl Zimmer where the emphasis is on the parasitic stage of symbiosis.

One of the most interesting ideas Ryan presents is that of "genomic intelligence." We are accustomed to thinking of intelligence in terms of computer chips or neurological growths, but perhaps the most important intelligence on this planet is of another kind, something like that of the ant colony or our immune system or that contained in the form and "behavior" of the virus. Consider, as Ryan does, that the virus has been co-evolving with its hosts, beginning with single-celled bacteria for perhaps a couple billion years or so. During this vast expanse of time it has "explored" the "landscape of the genome" (p. 226) and come to "understand" it so well that it is able to use the genome of virtually every creature on earth for its reproduction. Yet, the genome itself has its intelligence that has allowed it to continue to reproduce itself despite what the viruses are doing. This sort of intelligence cannot be discerned from examining the virus or the genetic code alone because such intelligence exists in concert with an environment at the molecular level of shapes and surfaces that is only expressed through the dynamics of growth. As in an ant colony there is no centralized "authority" where this intelligence exists; indeed the intelligence is an emergent property of the entity's interaction with its environment.

This book is therefore more than just a compelling report on the threat we face from emerging viruses, but an exploration of the evolutionary significance of our place within the viral environment. It is so well written, so well thought out and still so entirely pertinent to what is happening today that I would like to see Ryan revise it to include material on SARS and other outbreaks and to bring us up to date on what is now being done by the World Health Organization and other institutions to fight the grave dangers we face.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Riveting, informative read, February 11, 2001

By 

L. Blackmore (Norwich, VT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues (Paperback)

As someone only peripherally involved with epidemiology and public health, I found Ryan's book an entirely fascinating read, and nowhere near as sensationalist as the title might have implied. Not only for its suspenseful chronology of how the courage and tenacity of epi researchers has us closer to understanding these natural threats, but also for the countless "aha" moments it offers on how viruses actually live and work.

Ryan strikes a good balance between readability and credibility, using both layman's terms and (as far as I can tell with the help of the MD/epidemiologist in the family) accurate use of the appropriate lingo for his subject matter.

Basing his narrative on actual outbreaks of different types has helped Ryan create easily accessible self-contained sections that make the book an easy bedsider.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another good virus book, August 1, 1999

By 

Laura Matheny (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues (Paperback)

As a teacher who has a strange fascination with viruses, I use my summer to catch up on the latest books. While this book was in part a review of information presented in much more detail elsewhere (the endnotes are thorough with sources), the author's theory was new to me and kept me thinking for weeks. Even if you are quite familiar with the viruses discussed, I encourage you to read Dr. Ryan's conclusions.