Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them

by Mark Jerome Walters

Discusses six new epidemics, exploring the connection between human changes to the natural environment and the appearance of West Nile virus, mad cow disease, HIV/AIDS, hantavirus, Lyme disease, a new strain of salmonella, and SARS.

Genres: Nonfiction, Health, Science, Medical, Environment, Biology

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2003

Reviews

[GoldGato · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Did we really think we could rearrange the world in any way we pleased?"

Mankind is overwhelming our planet. With our insatiable greed for things we don't really need, we continue to destroy our own environment. We are ticking off Mother Nature. In response, Mother Nature has unleashed diseases aimed at keeping us in check...or perhaps eliminating us altogether.

This book looks at six specific 'plagues' and how humans have been responsible for their success.

MAD COW DISEASE
Cows fall down and they can't get back up on their hooves. Their brains have gone, literally, to mush. How did mankind get involved? We took our livestock from grass-eating contentedness and made them into cannibals. Cows now eat other cows, because it is cheaper for large corporations to crowd Bessie and her pals into filthy, cramped quarters and force them to eat ground-up...cows.

PAYBACK = Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is the human form of this brain-wasting disease. The agent of the disease is a zombie...you can't kill it, because it's already dead (not by sterilization, UV radiation, alcohol, or antibiotics).

HIV/AIDS
Think Joseph Conrad. Heavy humid air, rotting vegetation, silence. Heart of Darkness. The jungle held humans at bay for centuries, but now that we have encroached beyond return, the jungle has delivered the AIDs virus, which jumped to humans from skinned monkeys. The author takes us to a typical village market where every kind of jungle creature is for sale as food.

PAYBACK = Simian Immunodeficiency Virus. Jumped to humans. Nice.
"You have to speak of HIV in the plural - HIVs. There is no one 'HIV Virus'. There are many."

SALMONELLA ST 104
Every time you have a cold and you say you need antibiotics to cure it, you are part of the problem. Antibiotics do not cure viruses (like a cold). Instead, our overuse of ABs has resulted in AB-resistant salmonella, which is one heck of a nasty bacteria. Because of this new resistance, a normal case of food poisoning can become fatal. The naughty corporations are also at play, feeding ABs to cattle like candy, which we then eat.

PAYBACK = In many animals, it doesn't even cause illness. In humans, it can be the end. Think of that when you next barbecue and raw meat juice is flying all over the place.

In the short term, it's cheaper to keep animals drugged than to keep them clean.

LYME DISEASE
In 1700, one man bought 17,000 acres of prime Northeast American forest from the Indians. Today, only 65 acres of the original trees remain. Again, in our goal of having lifelong mortgages and ugly-ass marble countertops, we have built suburbia into the forest primeval.

PAYBACK = The forest says, if you're gonna intrude on us, we will intrude on you. The result is the tick that causes pain and death.

HANTAVIRUS
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome causes its victims to drown in their own fluids. Deer mice are the agents, spreading it to humans who are too busy causing global warming to worry about the resulting weather changes affecting the deer mice population.

PAYBACK = For every El Nino that hits with greater and greater damage, the more Hantavirus deaths result.

WEST NILE VIRUS
Migrating birds. Globalization. Warming climate. Throw them all together and you have one of the fastest spreading diseases of the 21st Century. In just a few years, WNV jumped from Africa to California.

PAYBACK = West Nile can be transmitted by more than 30 species of mosquitoes. That's more than Yellow Fever and is highly unusual.

"The virus is spreading. We might slow it, but we can't stop it. Nothing can stop it."

This was a very good book. Good research, great prologues that make you want to know what happens next...my only complaint is it was too short. I'm writing this literally just minutes after spraying myself with anti-mozzy protectant. Little buggers.

Book Season = Spring (when flowers bloom, so do the vectors)

[Tamara Curtin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a lot of surprises here for anyone working at the pointy end of the stick in public health, but for those who aren't, this is a great explanation of the chain reactions caused by human practices. We like to think that "less developed" countries are the breeding grounds for new plagues, but they can come from anywhere.

[Mariano Avello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tomé este libro mientras remodelàbamos la biblioteca de mi liceo. Me llamó la atención de inmediato al mirar el índice. El capítulo sobre el origen del ViH es brutal, esa descripción de los mercados de carne de Gabòn me provocó escalofríos. El libro habla de todas las epidemias de rápida expansión con una intensidad periodística que hace que te lo imagines en imágenes con música tensa de fondo. Me demoré en leerlo pero al fin lo acabé.

A todo esto, el libro es del 2003, pero ya prevée los Sars como la futura plaga mundial.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them: An Informative Book That Could Save Lives"

According to the CDC, they report nearly 21 million cases of Covid-19, the pandemic dominating our world, corrupting people's lives, jobs, and well-beings. Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them authorized by Mark Jerome Walters brings the reality of multiple plagues in our history to light. Published by Shearwater Books in Washington D.C in 2014, Mark discusses West Nile Virus, Mad Cow, HIV/AIDS, Hantavirus, Lyme disease, a strain of Salmonella, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic. To this day these still affect the world greatly, as seen by the crashing economy, millions of deaths, and the more recent strand of SARS, Covid-19 . This book immerses the reader of those who lived during each plague. It gives a wonderful perspective on what life was like during these times, to prove Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing ThemMark Jerome Walters this Mark conveys “It poured before daybreak, and by eight o’clock the smell of raw meat hung in the humidity at the open-air market of Oloumi. As I entered the ground, the morning Air Gabon flight to Paris was passing over Libreville. Inside the market, flanks of duikers, smoked porcupine bodies, and crocodile tails covered the ground” (47). Overall Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them proves it’s an informative and thrilling book through Mark’s research, written records from each time period during each plague, and his first hand accounts talking to survivors.
Mark places the reader directly into each time period when diseases spread like wildfire. By providing the stories and knowledge of those who survived each pervasive, he informs every reader that picks up his book of the importance of each illness.. Seeing as SARS’ Covid-19 is alive today, that’s not the only prevalent sickness living today. Sadly, these issues never just go away. It’ll cause suffering for a very long time. These viruses don’t just go to sleep one day and disappear, they crash the economies, they kill millions and don’t spare loved ones. Each plague has different symptoms and can be obtained in strange ways. Mad Cow disease in particular, or to humans variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) is obtained by eating a diseased cows’ brain and spinal remnants or other organs from them. This thankfully led the FDA to ban organs from the human food chain (Dirmeitis 2). This book also helped educate the fact that the plagues aren’t the only issues, their effects can be dastardly as listed earlier. Even now, people are legally required to wear a mask to slow the spread of CoronaVirus. It’s truly insane how the world can change in the blink of an eye. No one expected any of these pandemics to happen.
According to Island Press, Mark Jerome Walters, the author of Six Modern Plague and How We Are Causing Them has a major in English, a masters in Journalism, he’s the Director of the M.A. in Digital Journalism and Design at the University of South Florida. On top of all of those accomplishments, he’s been a visiting lecturer at Harvard countless times and an associate at Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. He spent days researching to provide the information to educate everyone. He expressed his passions for learning through this book in such an informative and beautiful way. As a science lover myself, I love to delve into investigating a wide range of scientific topics, illnesses, biology, I adore it all. This book really taught me a lot and I’m glad I picked it up. More great works similar to this include Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, How to Survive a Plague by David France, and A Beginning at the End: A Novel of Hope and Recovery After Pandemic by Mike Chen. Compared to all of these, I was astounded by how well done Mark conveyed his important messages in his writing.
George Santayana stated, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”. Winston Churchill paraphrased his words to “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” (Virginia Tech 1). So pick up Mark’s book and help prevent something these ailments from happening ever again.

Works Cited

Earle, Sylvia. “Mark Jerome Walters.” Island Press, https://islandpress.org/author/mark-j.... Accessed 6 Jan. 2021.

Dirmeitis, Mary. "No sacred cows: it's off the front page, but mad cow disease's effects are still being felt." This Magazine, vol. 45, no. 3, Nov.-Dec. 2011, p. 11. Gale In Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A276352330/SUI.... Accessed 6 Jan. 2021.

“History Repeating.” College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences | Virginia Tech, liberalarts.vt.edu/magazine/2017/hist... statesman Edmund Burke is,Churchill wrote, “Those that fail. Accessed 6. Jan. 2021

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eloquent warning

"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.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Kylie Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been a long time since I have read a book that completely changed the way I see the world around me and how I fit into it. Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them by Mark Jerome Walters has captured my attention and engaged me completely throughout my reading. This work has altered the way I see the relationships between humans, animals, and the environment. This book, published in Washington DC by Island Press in 2003, is a nonfiction work about the interconnectedness of human health and the world around us. In addition to all of this, it contains an extensive and vast vocabulary and challenged my skills as a reader. This book is a valuable read for anyone looking to expand their knowledge or learn about the beginnings of diseases from an unfamiliar perspective. It is worth reading because of the strongly emphasized main point and the amount of educational material packed into 206 short pages.
Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them is a great book to read for fun, for a report, or just because you are curious. This is because Walters has made his point exceptionally clear with supporting evidence throughout the entire book. This piece examined the larger ecological aspect of how diseases are born and not just independent scenarios. The text includes explanations of West Nile virus, mad cow disease, HIV/AIDS, hantavirus (HPS), a strain of salmonella, and SARS. After introducing each disease, including an anecdote, stating the speculated origin, and explaining how humans interfering with the ecosystem caused it, the author finishes each chapter with the same idea. The main idea of the entire book is explained simply on page 126, “...human health and the fate of the natural world are inseparable” (Walters). The author stresses this point at the end of each chapter because it is extremely important and relevant to the modern world. With climate change and other current global crises, this book helps to explain the myriad of epidemics we may face as a cause of them. An example used in the text is how West Nile virus could have been spread to America because of a change in migration patterns of infected birds caused by temperature fluctuations. Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them is worth reading because it helps us to remember that we are dependent upon other forms of life for existence and we cannot continue to change their lives for the worse when attempting to change ours for the better.
Reading this book will, more than likely, expand your knowledge and challenge you to think deeply. This work contains a broad variety of vocabulary and knowledge about each epidemic. Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them is perfect for anyone writing a research paper, article, or making a video. This piece provided me with information about diseases I had never even heard of and it is filled with factual information. One example of this is when Walters describes, “Such changes can occur in two basic ways: the virus either incorporates genetic material from another virus or undergoes a spontaneous change in its own genetic makeup” (Walters 152). The text before this explains that viruses can mutate, then proceeds to go into much more depth in a way that is easy to understand than I thought plausible. In addition to this, each page is a new ocean of information, yet the book is still engrossing and interesting. Walters does a fantastic job of making all of the given information comprehensible to the average student. I would rate this book a nine out of ten. Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them is an eye-opening work and a must-read for anyone concerned about the environment because of the amount of factual text about our world in between the covers.
Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them by Mark Jerome Walters is worth reading because it has a strongly supported main idea and a plethora of new information presented in a comprehensible way. The author describes various epidemics and makes sure to deeply engrave the main idea of the book into each chapter by connecting each disease to the relationship that humans share with the ecosystem. The main idea is that humans are not the dominant force in nature, but part of a larger ecological story and depend on other beings to survive. This book was stunning and changed the way I view the link between the ecosystem and the human world. It is not every day that you find a book that makes you think as deeply and complexly as Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them by Mark Jerome Walters, so when you find one, seize the opportunity to further your thinking and, possibly, better yourself.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways, this was a frightening book - the connection between our health and the environment is so clearly outlined, yet it doesn't feel as though there's been much progress on the environmental front since this book was published almost fifteen years ago. The plagues themselves have come and gone - some sticking around, some rising to prominence before fading again, some less widely publicized, but the statements made about needing to take a closer look at our surroundings and our human impact on them really deserve more attention and action, and that's a claim that is emphasized over and over again throughout the chapters. Although the segments didn't always follow a clear progression and sometimes felt lacking in more information about the disease (earlier chapters seemed better than later ones), the environmental connection is a constant theme. One thing that really stood in reading this book is how long it can sometimes take to trace a disease back to its origin and truly prove the connections of how it spreads...and how much evidence is required to convince governmental agencies, especially those that receive funding from competing interests! Overall, this process definitely points to the need for organizations to communicate and cooperate on a global scale - we live in a global environment and need to operate as such, especially in situations which can so easily affect the health and lives of people around the world.

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned some new things reading this - some of them infuriating to the point that I couldn't read it in my doctor's office before the nurse took my vitals because it raised my blood pressure too much. The fact that commerce and efficiency can take precedence over the well-being of the people elected officials were (and are) supposed to serve is not a new idea, but it is enraging to read about. Walters continuously stresses that humans are not living in a vacuum, we interact with our environment and it in turn interacts and is influenced by us. While this was a little repetitive, it was an important point that more people in positions of power need to understand.

Also, it is important that scientists and health care officials keep an open mind when encountering new diseases - complacency will be the death of us all.

[Shani · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick easy read especially for someone like me who only has a very basic knowledge of epidemiology. It was interesting learning the origins of modern day illnesses, but to call them "plagues" creates fanaticism that is often propagated by an over zealous media. People who worry about getting one of the handful of Hantavirus cases each year are sometimes the same ones who refuse to get a flu shot or wear a seatbelt when running to the grocery store. These two "plagues" kill tens of thousands of people in the US alone. I understand the need to be ecologically responsible but calling all modern diseases "plagues" seems a bit overdramatic.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hantavirus, Mad Cow Disease, West Nile -- Lyme Disease comes across as the New England equivalent of African logging operations dragging AIDS out of the bush... In the Epilogue, SARS is discussed hinting at the the threat of coronavirus diseases.

[Sandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little out-of-date at this point (copyright 2003), but still fascinating to read about how these disease originated and the close linking with animals in many of the cases.

[Mackenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A somewhat quick read, and all pretty interesting on how epidemics evolve. I do wonder if any of the theories from this book have been proven or looked further into since it was published

[Chris Demer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is ten years old, it has relevancy today. The author, a journalist and veterinarian, contends that many of the current and emerging infectious diseases are the result of our tampering with the environment.
1. Although mad cow disease and its human form vCJD seems to be under control, it never would have happened if large feed companies had not used rendered animal products (specifically sheep, including those who died of scrapie) in fodder sold to dairy and beef farmers in England.
Most of the farmers were unaware of the contents of the foo they gave their cows. If they had let them eat grass, as they were meant to, there would not have been the need to destroy millions of head of livestock, bankrupting many.

2.AIDS-This current scourge, having killed millions and infected so many more, almost certainly emerged from a virus that infected chimpanzees in the wild, probably not making them sick. The logging and mining operations deep into the forests of central Africa, with their concomitant roads, camps and workers required food sources. Since transportation was poor, "bush meat" became the major source of protein.
That includes all kinds of chimpanzees, monkeys and many other animals, slaughtered and eaten. In the process, the virus adapted to humans with disastrous consequences.

3.Antibiotic resistance- increasing at an alarming rate. Organisms exposed to multiple doses of antibiotics evolve resistance to them, making the drugs useless when humans are infected. One of the main problems is the use of antibiotics in animal feed to induce more rapid growth. That bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics has been known for over 50 years, yet, due to lobbying by the companies (Big Pharma) they are still regularly fed to animals in the US. The drug companies are not pursuing the development of new antibiotics because the monetary return is not sufficient. It's all about the bottom line.

4. Lyme Disease- increasing in incidence and if not diagnosed and treated can result in serious chronic effects. Why now? We have altered the forest ecosystem dramatically. More deer, and rodents that carry the ticks that carry the organism. Few predators. And many houses built in or near forests and clearings in the exurbs-right up next to where the ticks are.

5. West Nile Virus- still not common, but not too rare in the US any more. Global warming and mosquitoes as undocumented immigrants.

6. Hanta Virus- in the southwest. Global warming, increasing rainfall in certain areas, more mice, more Hanta virus. And it kills young folks in particular - and very fast!

While this author discusses external environmental factors resulting in diseases, "Missing Microbes" discusses changes in the internal environment - our microbiome- that may be responsible for many serious conditions. They, and we, are all connected. We need to understand how we evolved and our relationships with other organisms- then act accordingly.
An interesting, well-written and well-documented book. Highly recommended.

[Hannah Lincoln · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful and easy read. I have no background in science but was able to grasp the content and enjoy it.

[Gregg Wingo · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Caiden · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is interesting and a very basic understanding of epidemiology and the impact of our eco system on that. If you have a strong science background, I don't know how informative this book would be. This book is written more to the general population and for folks with a more basic foundation in the sciences. It is interesting to look at some modern day diseases and how they came into existence because of the eco system changes. Overall it is interesting and a quick read.

[Faith B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my class Biological Impact and Issues, about infectious diseases. While this book was certainly more engaging than our textbook, I felt that it was overall rather meh. The writing style tries to be pleasantly informal but only succeeds in sounding dumbed-down. I do think that it had an interesting way of presenting the diseases though.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think that the book was very informational on how the illness started with one cow and spread to the rest of the herd and then to other farms. It also does good on telling us how we caused them and why it got started.

[Laurie Fosburgh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a quick read. The author is a veterinarian, so he approaches the book from his experiences. Each plague is traced from animals to humans, but I feel like he neglected to mention some. MRSA and anthrax, for example. The hantavirus chapter was absurdly short. It explained very little.

[Moonburst · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book. If you want an interesting view with a side of Ecology, I'd look at this book.

[Nicole Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like this book could have dove more into the topics it covered. There was no real analysis of any of the problems they mentioned.

[Witch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is irrelevant, but I used this in my ENGL 141 research paper about prion diseases, and I totally tooted by own horn whenever I cited Walters, because I share his last name.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was very good. I read it for the Infectious Disease Ecology class. It looks at six different diseases and ...

[Sarah Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was okay, it got kind of boring towards the end of each plague. It was an educational read though.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting overviews of interesting infectious disease. I found the section on Lyme disease particularly interesting and gained some new understandings about how this disease propagates.

[Alexis]

Section on BSE.

[Linda Flores]

A bit too much simple reading but great insight