The Ebola virus was first
identified in remote villages in Central Africa in Sudan and Zaire nearly forty
years ago in 19 The
Ebola virus was first identified in remote villages in Central Africa in Sudan
and Zaire nearly forty years ago in 1976.
Between 1976 and 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) documented
2,387 cases (restrained to Africa only) and about half have died. Of course, in
the last two years that number has now climbed to over 10,000 cases. On October
23, WHO convened a crisis meeting to figure out how get the two vaccines now in
development, through clinical trials, and developed at an “accelerated pace.”
An epidemic involves a widespread
outbreak of an infectious disease in one community all in a particular time
period. A pandemic, on the other hand, means (from the Greek) “pertaining to
all people.” A pandemic, then, is an outbreak in a wide area or global sphere.
Pandemics in history have included notorious outbreaks, including the Black
Death and Bubonic Plagues that devastated Europe in the 1300s and 1800s. There
have been extensive outbreaks of Cholera and Influenza. The Spanish Flu was
responsible for millions of deaths in 1918, 1919 and 1920. (Read local author,
and past library trustee, Patti Fanning’s account in “Influenza and Inequality,”
published in 2010 in which she discusses how that epidemic affected our Norwood
community.) In just three years, the Spanish Flu affected 500 million people
worldwide and killed 50-100 million of them.
According
to the World Health Organization (WHO) website, Ebola is deadliest in countries
“lacking human and infrastructural resources”.
In other words, Ebola's death rate will be highest in countries with
inadequate healthcare and systems in place to contain the virus. There have
been scientific books written about the Ebola virus since the late 1970s. However, it was in the 1990s that the Ebola
virus became more of a household word.
Laurie Garrett, in the non-fiction book, “The Coming Plague” (1995)
based her book on her own research of both scientific material, interviews, and
popular literature. One of her premises
is that an overuse of antibiotics has produced drug-resistance and viruses and
infections are mutating. In addition,
funding for necessary research is diminishing.
Diseases, then, will fill this void and spread in this era of woes –
recessions, global warming, and our world that was recklessly
polluted in the 20th century.
Two years later, in 1995, author
Richard Preston wrote an alarming thriller – a book of non-fiction titled “The
Hot Zone.” The Ebola scare hit the
literary scene when Preston wrote an article for the New Yorker in 1992:
“Crisis in the Hot Zone.” In the "Hot Zone, he included the history of
both the Ebola and Marburg viruses and produced an even more frightening work
by including stories about the deaths of monkeys in a research facility in
Reston, Virginia. Of interest is the news that producer Ridley Scott has just
announced a television series based upon the incidents in Preston's book. A few years after the dramatic “Hot Zone”,
Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher Hoch, both researchers with the CDC, the
Center for Disease Control, in Atlanta wrote “Level 4 - Virus Hunters of the
CDC." Trained in epidemiology and
virology, the married couple has studied Ebola, AIDS, Lassa fever,
Legionnaire’s disease and hepatitis. Their thrilling and disturbing case
studies about these microscopic pathogens and how they are studies are included
with biographical information in their book.
The first decade of the 21st Century
produced many more books published on epidemics, their unexpected spread, and
fear and dread that they have induced. They began in 2001 with “Killer Germs,”
followed six years later in “The Little Book of Pandemics." Both were written by Peter Moore, a British
Ph.D. Moore’s books are filled with
facts – some alarming ones– about the rise of the numbers of infectious
diseases, and the fight to stop them - not necessarily the deaths from them.
Moore covers Rocky Mountain fever, West Nile, SARS among the more well-known –
leprosy, meningitis, smallpox and influenza. David Zimmerman, author of “Killer
Germs” (2003) included bioterrorism, flesh-eating bacteria, and future super
germs in his account of “bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and worms” that threaten
our health. Dorothy Crawford, in “Deadly
Companions” (2007) describes how microbes have shaped human history. Carl Zimmer explains in “A Planet of Viruses”
(2013), a readable book of 11 short essays, that our world ‘is crawling’ with
viruses and always has been. In “Deadly Outbreaks” (2013), Alexandra Levitt
explains that the danger from drug-resistant bacteria and the steps that
medical investigators are taking to overcome the mysteries of emerging diseases
and unexplained deaths.
Interestingly, Philip Alcabes,
author of “Dread - How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from Black Death
to Avian Flu” (2009), explains that we have a much higher likelihood of dying
in many other ways than dying of a contagious disease. The drama and fascination of epidemics and
pandemics make great subjects for movies and emergency-room trauma series. Yet,
the anxiety and fear do not meet the risk. That said, even the most
level-headed of us can have difficulties sorting out fact from fiction is our
age of round-the-clock sensational media coverage.
More alarming are some of the more
recent books by Peter Piot, Nathan Wolfe, and David Quammen. Piot, as a young
doctor, was one of the first researchers of the Ebola virus in the 1970s. Only a decade later, he was stalking the AIDS
virus throughout Africa and across the globe. His book, “No Time to Lose”
(2012) describes his life – one ‘in pursuit of deadly viruses.” Stanford biologist Wolfe’s book, “The Viral
Storm” (2011) attests that it is our life in this modern age that makes us
vulnerable. David Quammen has written
two books in just the past two years. His most recent, “Ebola” will be
published this month. That book is a
more comprehensive analysis of the Ebola virus, a discussion he included in
“Spillover” - a 2012 book that explores the connection of animal-borne diseases
that “spillover” from the animal world to humans such as SARS, Ebola and AIDS.
Reading these books can be
unsettling and frightening. However, it
is critically important to educate rather than overreact, to
enlighten rather than fear. All of these books are available through the
Minuteman Library Network and our library catalog. Several are available in
audio, large print and electronic format. Call the library if you need help
requesting them.
