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Animal Viruses and Humans, a Narrow Divide: How Lethal Zoonotic Viruses Spill Over and Threaten Us
"Frighteningly fascinating."—Booklist
"Gripping stories, filled with details that are in equal part delicious and disgusting, but always fascinating."—Lisa Sanders, MD, author of Every Patient Tells a Story and the New York Times Magazine "Diagnosis" column
“To reproduce promiscuously and to wreak havoc wherever they can find a home,” this is the sole raison d'être of viruses writes Dr. Warren Andiman, an HIV/AIDS researcher who has been on the front lines battling infectious diseases for over forty years. In Animal Viruses and A Narrow Divide, Andiman traces the history of eight zoonotic viruses —deadly microbes that have made the leap directly from animals to human Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Swine influenza, Hantavirus, Monkeypox, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Rabies, Ebola, and Henipaviruses (Nipah and Hendra). He also illustrates the labor intensive and fascinating detective work that infectious disease specialists must do to uncover the source of an outbreak.
Andiman also looks to the future, envisioning the effects on zoonoses (diseases caused by zoonotic viruses) of climate change, microenvironmental damage, population shifts, and globalization. He reveals the steps that we can, and must, take to stem the spread of animal viruses, explaining, “The zoonoses I've chosen to write about . . . are meant to describe only a small sample of what is already out there but, more menacingly, what is inevitably on its way, in forms we can only imagine.”
Warren Andiman, MD is professor emeritus of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
"Gripping stories, filled with details that are in equal part delicious and disgusting, but always fascinating."—Lisa Sanders, MD, author of Every Patient Tells a Story and the New York Times Magazine "Diagnosis" column
“To reproduce promiscuously and to wreak havoc wherever they can find a home,” this is the sole raison d'être of viruses writes Dr. Warren Andiman, an HIV/AIDS researcher who has been on the front lines battling infectious diseases for over forty years. In Animal Viruses and A Narrow Divide, Andiman traces the history of eight zoonotic viruses —deadly microbes that have made the leap directly from animals to human Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Swine influenza, Hantavirus, Monkeypox, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Rabies, Ebola, and Henipaviruses (Nipah and Hendra). He also illustrates the labor intensive and fascinating detective work that infectious disease specialists must do to uncover the source of an outbreak.
Andiman also looks to the future, envisioning the effects on zoonoses (diseases caused by zoonotic viruses) of climate change, microenvironmental damage, population shifts, and globalization. He reveals the steps that we can, and must, take to stem the spread of animal viruses, explaining, “The zoonoses I've chosen to write about . . . are meant to describe only a small sample of what is already out there but, more menacingly, what is inevitably on its way, in forms we can only imagine.”
Warren Andiman, MD is professor emeritus of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
233 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2018
131 people are currently reading
434 people want to read
About the author
Warren A. Andiman
1 book3 followersWarren Andiman is an author, he is Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Disease), Yale School of Medicine and the Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases), Yale School of Medicine. He has been a member of the Yale Medical School Faculty since 1976.
In 1987 he founded the AIDS Care Program at Yale-New Haven Hospital
In 1987 he founded the AIDS Care Program at Yale-New Haven Hospital
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 12, 2019
A good book but I took off a star because I was unimpressed with the information in the rabies chapter. It sounded like a lot of contradictions and generalizing where the author claims no matter what the source of rabies ACTUALLY was, it must always be declared as bats. He even said, in the same sentence, that even though less than 1% of bats actually even carry rabies, we are left with the unfortunate conclusion it must be them (how?!), and he goes on to tell how doctors badger the victim’s families to tell doctors the patient had contact with bats even when they didn’t. He also outlines a case in which the victim got rabies from a sick cow, but because it was in America it couldn’t have been the cow, but had to have been bats. Also, he keeps talking about bats biting people. There is only ONE known species of bat that bites, and it doesn’t even bite, it scratches and licks. This is the Vampire bat that lives from South America and as far North as southern Texas. Anywhere else, any species else, bats don’t bite. It also disturbed me that, according to this chapter, doctors in America can’t even properly diagnose rabies even though it’s probably one of the most classic examples of diseases made immortal by literature and movies such as Old Yeller and To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet, according to this author, American doctors some how cannot recognize it when it’s right under their noses even when the patient tells them they were bit by an animal, and then go and do shady practices such as using victims as organ donors which spreads disease to the organ recipient. Yeah. No thanks. Definitely not a chapter that would recommend the American Health Care System in any way shape or form and disappointing seeing a lot of misinformation on the role of bats coming from a professor at one of our top colleges, YALE of all places. As I’m not as versed in the rest of the viruses he outlines, I did enjoy the other chapters, but the amount of misinformation and downright damaging myth propagated against bats in the rabies chapter, and also noticing he chose an individual publishing company instead of a university press, which would have been subject to peer review, does make one question.
April 8, 2025
Canceled:
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(In actuality, fun refresher on viruses - def wayyyy more targeted to an MD audience. Minus star bc I think it can be made more accessible to the general public)
🦇❌
🐀❌
🐖❌
(In actuality, fun refresher on viruses - def wayyyy more targeted to an MD audience. Minus star bc I think it can be made more accessible to the general public)
May 26, 2020
Wow...it's really too bad that there are so few intelligent people in Washington DC who can read. I'm on a kick reading books that apply to COVID19. I teach physiology, pathophysiology, and infectious disease is kind of my thing since I worked with HIV for four years. This book is soo important to read, because as man increasing comes in contact with animals that we don't usually 'live' with, we are exposed to their diseases. Just with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus which ultimately originated with bats, many other viruses usually start with bats. I'm pretty sure COVID19 original source is bats. We invade their forests, human beings eat them in places like China and Africa, and this leads to changes in viruses, and most often makes those viruses more likely to invade us as host organisms.
Andiman does an excellent job presenting different animals viruses that have crossed the barriers to infect us. He demonstrates how easily this is done. If you put together a list of all the viruses that come from animals that have the worst impact on humans beings...Andiman covers most of these in one form or another. Rabies is a killer of 100%, meaning without applying the vaccine (after the fact within 2 weeks) it kills 100% of the people with it. Rabies comes from bats and skunks, and dogs. HIV from bats and other primates. TB from cattle, we know COVID19 and SARS and MERS all come from either bats, birds, or civets (cat from China). The list goes on and on. The question right now, which Andiman also brings up in his book, is "when are humans going to learn?" When do we learn to respect nature enough to quit trying to misuse it's resources? If we don't learn, we will be responsible for killing off the entire race.
Very smart book. If you don't have any kind of a medical background it may seem like a slog even though I think Andiman writes well. But this is such an important book, that I will be recommending it to my students.
Andiman does an excellent job presenting different animals viruses that have crossed the barriers to infect us. He demonstrates how easily this is done. If you put together a list of all the viruses that come from animals that have the worst impact on humans beings...Andiman covers most of these in one form or another. Rabies is a killer of 100%, meaning without applying the vaccine (after the fact within 2 weeks) it kills 100% of the people with it. Rabies comes from bats and skunks, and dogs. HIV from bats and other primates. TB from cattle, we know COVID19 and SARS and MERS all come from either bats, birds, or civets (cat from China). The list goes on and on. The question right now, which Andiman also brings up in his book, is "when are humans going to learn?" When do we learn to respect nature enough to quit trying to misuse it's resources? If we don't learn, we will be responsible for killing off the entire race.
Very smart book. If you don't have any kind of a medical background it may seem like a slog even though I think Andiman writes well. But this is such an important book, that I will be recommending it to my students.
July 19, 2020
Viruses are dangerous beings. Are the alive or not? There is scientific disagreement about that but one thing is certain - they need to invade a host to survive and multiply. Many viruses exist in animals such as bats and pigs and they only cross over to humans under unique circumstances. It really gets scary when they mutate to allow human to human transfers. That is where we are right now in the summer of 2020. This book was written and published prior to the current pandemic but the author warns of the possibility of a catastrophic new corona virus. The book contains a lot of scientific information which I could not fully absorb though one thought did strike home. If human beings ever decide to stop hunting, raising, eating, selling, wearing or trading animals and just leave them unmolested, more viral diseases will be eliminated than can be achievable under any scientific vaccine.
December 11, 2021
Timely and thorough
In 2005 a paper was published by scientists from Yale Med and the NIH presenting a prototype SARS vaccine that was for some reason, not pursued. While this author was not (necessarily) part of that, it is clear that he is part of a forward thinking group. This discussion of the interface between viruses and society ought to be required reading at a time when a massively complex subject is being presented incompletely by unschooled mainstream media. Very readable, but it doesn't back away from a challenge.
In 2005 a paper was published by scientists from Yale Med and the NIH presenting a prototype SARS vaccine that was for some reason, not pursued. While this author was not (necessarily) part of that, it is clear that he is part of a forward thinking group. This discussion of the interface between viruses and society ought to be required reading at a time when a massively complex subject is being presented incompletely by unschooled mainstream media. Very readable, but it doesn't back away from a challenge.
December 16, 2020
It's hard to find an informative science book to learn things from that reads as easily as a fun fiction book. I happened to be reading this in the beginning of 2020 just before coronavirus hit. I work in zoonotic disease prevention and wanted to get a little deeper understanding of viral spillover. Not the most in depth if you're looking for super details but interesting case studies with adequate background info for each virus discussed. I enjoyed it.
January 19, 2021
This is one of the very best books on viruses and their hosts that I’ve ever read and I’ve been a doctor for 51 years. It can be easily understood by non medical people. I recommend it to everyone who have questions about where viruses come from and how they get into us and what we’ve learned about how to keep ourselves safe. Viral illness will not stop. Viruses have been with us for the entire history of humans.
October 27, 2020
An engaging read that was written before COVID-19 but so describes what later happened. This book tells stories about virus outbreaks in the past and then concludes with what to do in a pandemic to stop one.
March 3, 2021
Our leaders should have read this!
Concise and to the point, Andiman, while never mentioning SARS CoV-2, describes many emergent viral diseases, their transmission, and how they can be squelched. Books of this nature shouuld be required reading for every government on Earth.
Concise and to the point, Andiman, while never mentioning SARS CoV-2, describes many emergent viral diseases, their transmission, and how they can be squelched. Books of this nature shouuld be required reading for every government on Earth.
April 3, 2020
Everyone needs to read this. As in Everyone.
December 3, 2020
This is so well written... the science is down to Earth and no less compelling. We have been so close to major world outbreaks so many times... this is an eye-opener.
June 2, 2020
Zoonotic viruses - a new word for me. “Influenza has been called the last great uncontrolled plague of man. In the U.S., during epidemics, it is the only infectious agent that predictably causes a marked spike in the national death rate… every few years it arouses worldwide terror and generally defies control by vaccination, which is always less than perfect.” Viruses “are the most successful inhabitants of the biosphere… outnumbering all forms of cellular life combined” and mutate at a super-fast pace. The animal groups most likely to share viruses with humans are birds, bats, pigs, primates, and rodents; but smallpox, measles and mumps are human-only viruses. Outbreaks often relate to developing world poverty and a tragic misallocation of resources by local governments. Globalization and climate change also contribute. Chapters cover, among others:
1. MERS-CoV, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, a coronavirus spread via camels and humans mainly in Saudi Arabia. Periodic, small outbreaks after the first in 2012, not easily transmitted. There is no vaccine.
2. Swine Flu, H1-N1 or influenza A, caused a 2009 pandemic. Related to Hong Kong flu and the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, killing 40 million people. Commonly associated with people who work with swine. The US pork industry successfully lobbied to have the disease referred to only as H1-N1 by WHO. A hurriedly-created vaccine caused cases of Guillain–Barré syndrome.
3. Hantavirus, SNV (sin nombre (no-name) virus), first seen in 1950s Korea, and a 1993 American Southwest outbreak, associated with rodent droppings, results in the Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, and often affects the kidneys. Does not appear to spread person-to-person.
4. Monkeypox is related to smallpox, buffalopox and cowpox. Antibodies from any one of them vaccinates against all. There was a US outbreak in 2003; all had sick pet prairie dogs, all transmissions were animal to human. The infection came from an exotic animal distributor who had an infected giant Gambian rat. Many African animals carry the virus, and DR Congo and Sudan have the world’s largest number of infections, which rose after routine smallpox vaccinations stopped.
5. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), exactly like Covid-19, is a coronavirus that was discovered in a ‘wet’ wildlife market in southern China in 2003, traced back to civet cats by way of bats. The lab that uncovered the link to bats was – you guessed it – the virus research lab in Wuhan!
1. MERS-CoV, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, a coronavirus spread via camels and humans mainly in Saudi Arabia. Periodic, small outbreaks after the first in 2012, not easily transmitted. There is no vaccine.
2. Swine Flu, H1-N1 or influenza A, caused a 2009 pandemic. Related to Hong Kong flu and the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, killing 40 million people. Commonly associated with people who work with swine. The US pork industry successfully lobbied to have the disease referred to only as H1-N1 by WHO. A hurriedly-created vaccine caused cases of Guillain–Barré syndrome.
3. Hantavirus, SNV (sin nombre (no-name) virus), first seen in 1950s Korea, and a 1993 American Southwest outbreak, associated with rodent droppings, results in the Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, and often affects the kidneys. Does not appear to spread person-to-person.
4. Monkeypox is related to smallpox, buffalopox and cowpox. Antibodies from any one of them vaccinates against all. There was a US outbreak in 2003; all had sick pet prairie dogs, all transmissions were animal to human. The infection came from an exotic animal distributor who had an infected giant Gambian rat. Many African animals carry the virus, and DR Congo and Sudan have the world’s largest number of infections, which rose after routine smallpox vaccinations stopped.
5. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), exactly like Covid-19, is a coronavirus that was discovered in a ‘wet’ wildlife market in southern China in 2003, traced back to civet cats by way of bats. The lab that uncovered the link to bats was – you guessed it – the virus research lab in Wuhan!
May 19, 2021
Notes for the present and future
What COVID 19 or SARS shows is this is not new and not the last. All our hand wringing has happened before but we should not forget the current lesson
What COVID 19 or SARS shows is this is not new and not the last. All our hand wringing has happened before but we should not forget the current lesson
December 7, 2018
This would be a great addition to the reading list for any courses in international health, virology, environmental health, or infectious disease.
April 10, 2020
Those pesky bats!
May 15, 2022
Subject matter was great. Writing and editing, not so much.
August 23, 2023
Excellent read about crossover diseases.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews