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Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them Hardcover – September 10, 2003

by Mark Jerome Walters (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
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"In a clear, engaging style, Dr. Walters tells the tale of each disease like a detective story. He allows each mystery to unfold as it did in reality, often slowly, through the lives of the plants and animals involved, the first human victims, the government officials who tried to respond, and the scientists who ultimately explained what was happening." -NEW YORK TIMES
"...a fascinating work of ecological journalism, utterly convincing in its argument: that our health and the health of the environment are intimately linked, and we overlook that link at our peril." -MICHAEL POLLAN, AUTHOR OF SECOND NATURE AND THE BOTANY OF DESIRE
"Mark Jerome Walters weaves a fine thread of human disturbances through the quilt work of modern pandemics. After being drawn engagingly into the explosive symptoms of global environmental change, readers will come to understand that we have no choice but to make peace with nature." -PAUL R. EPSTEIN, M.D., M.P.H., CENTER FOR HEALTH AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
West Nile Virus -- Mad Cow Disease -- HIV/AIDS -- Hantavirus -- Lyme Disease ... and a new strain of Salmonella. Such modern epidemics have emerged over the past few decades as mysterious, yet significant risks to human health. These "plagues" are forcing us to modify our lifestyles in ways that minimize our chances of becoming a statistic in the latest tally of the afflicted.In Six Modern Plagues, Mark Jerome Walters offers us the first book for the general reader that connects these emerging health risks and their ecological origins. Drawing on new research, interviews, and his own investigations, Mark Jerome Walters weaves together a compelling argument: that changes humans have made to the environment, from warming the climate to clearing the forests, have contributed to, if not caused a rising tide of diseases that are afflicting humans and many other species.
According to Mark Jerome Walters, humans are not always innocent bystanders to infectious disease. To the contrary, in the case of many modern epidemics, we are the instigators. Six Modern Plagues, a ground-breaking introduction to the connection between disease and environmental degradation should be read by all those interested in their health and the health of others.
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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Shearwater
  4. Publication date
    September 10, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    155963992X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1559639927
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The SARS outbreak earlier this year was a classic illustration of how disease can spread around the world via intercontinental travelers and how diseases can jump from animals to humans. Walters, a veterinarian and Harvard Medical School visiting lecturer, describes how human actions affecting the environment and the animals that live in it have exacerbated the spread of six diseases that have jumped in similar fashion to our species from their original hosts, creating serious new threats to public health. He begins with perhaps the most frightening one of all, mad cow disease, which attacks victims' brains. Many scientists believe the biological agent that causes the disease spread from scrapie-infected sheep to cows when sheep by-products were put in high-protein livestock feed. A virulent new strain of salmonella, DT104, has been created in part through the food industry's feeding antibiotics to chickens and livestock. Walters also explains that as hunters and laborers in central Africa continue to eat bush meat, new diseases will almost surely emerge from out of the jungles, as HIV did. The author also looks at hantavirus, its outbreaks thus far restricted to parts of the Southwest; Lyme disease, spread by deer ticks that live on and are spread by mice; and the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which made its way to America from the eastern Mediterranean a few years ago. Walters presents a compelling case that the "deep ecological, demographic, and industrial roots" of these diseases must be considered if we are to minimize the danger of future emerging diseases.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American

In the late 1960s the U.S. surgeon general declared that Americans could "close the book on infectious diseases." In 1999 the World Health Organization reported that "diseases that seemed to be subdued ... are fighting back with renewed ferocity." And then there are the new or transformed diseases that have made headlines in recent years. Walters, a veterinarian and journalist, focuses on six of them: mad cow disease, AIDS, salmonella DT 104, Lyme disease, hantavirus and West Nile virus. In an epilogue, he briefly describes the latest headline maker, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). "The larger story," he writes, "is not simply that humans and other animals are falling victim to new diseases; it is that we are causing or exacerbating many of them, not least of all through the radical changes we have made to the natural environment."

Editors of Scientific American

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Shearwater
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 10, 2003
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 155963992X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1559639927
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 out of 5 stars 21 ratings

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Mark Jerome Walters

Mark Jerome Walters

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Mark Jerome Walters is a veterinarian, a journalist, and a professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He is the author of six books. His writing has been favorably reviewed in the New York Times, Nature, The New York Review of Books, and numerous other scholarly and popular publications. Dr. Walters speaks frequently on the subject of science and communication. He received his bachelor's degree in English literature from McGill University, his master's in journalism from Columbia University, and his doctorate in veterinary medicine from Tufts University.

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Dr of Things
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic
    Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2012
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    This was actually a fantastic read. Bought it for a class and really enjoyed reading it. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in biomedical science
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  • B. Estorga
    4.0 out of 5 stars A chilling introduction to human / microbe interaction in the modern world
    Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2006
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    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.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • eric andre michot
    3.0 out of 5 stars the 7th moderm plague....
    Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2004
    drawing me in with a tantalizing title and promise of much explanations, i am left perplexed.
    the author makes tenuous links between this and that, throws around a lot of names of scientists and 'victims' of the said plagues but does not provide much scientific background.
    this reads like a Harlequin, you read it fast and you forget it fast.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Evelyn After
    5.0 out of 5 stars It Was For School...
    Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2011
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    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.
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great, easy to read book
    Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2016
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    Reading for a micro class, but a great book!
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  • Gregory Alan Wingo
    4.0 out of 5 stars A compelling read
    Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2005
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    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.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Robert T.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2015
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    school book
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  • Dennis Littrell
    4.0 out of 5 stars An eloquent warning
    Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2004
    "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.
    19 people found this helpful
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  • とうふ田楽
    3.0 out of 5 stars 新しい「伝染病の時代」
    Reviewed in Japan on June 5, 2005
    Verified Purchase
    二十世紀、医療の発展により人類は伝染病の恐怖から解放されつつあるように思えた。
    しかし現在もなお、どこからともなく次々と新たな伝染病が現れ、人々を脅かしている。
    効率重視の畜産、環境破壊といった人間の活動が新たな病原体を生み、世界中を結ぶ交通網が、一地域で発生した伝染病をあっという間に世界中に広めてしまう。
    科学の発展により、新しい「伝染病の時代」が到来したといえるかもしれない…。
    狂牛病、AIDS、抗生物質耐性サルモネラ菌、Lyme病、ハンタウイルス、西ナイルウイルス
    の六つについてそれぞれ、伝染病の発生から病原体解明までのエピソードが簡単に紹介されています。
    エピローグではSARSと鳥インフルエンザについての言及もあり。
    あっさりしてますがなかなか面白かったです。普段こういったジャンルを読まない人にも、読み易くてよいかも。
    文明批判といった強い調子ではありませんが、新たな伝染病を生み出してしまうヒトの活動に対する懸念、特に効率重視のあまり「生き物への思いやり」のなくなった現代の畜産業のあり方に対する筆者の憂いも示されており、共感せざるをえませんでした。
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