Animal Viruses and Humans, a Narrow Divide: How Lethal Zoonotic Viruses Spill Over and Threaten Us

“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 at Yale-New Haven Hospital who has been on the front lines battling infectious disease for over forty years. In Animal Viruses and Humans, A Narrow Divide, Dr. Andiman presents the mysterious world of zoonoses, viruses that can be transmitted from animals to humans. What do these viruses look like? Where do they come from? How do they invade so efficiently? When and why do they infect human populations? In informal, accessible language Andiman weaves together gripping narrative and scientific explanation to detail the spillover of viruses including MERS, swine flu, monkey pox, SARS, hantavirus, rabies, ebola, nipah and hendra.

Dr. Andiman explores the effects of climate change on zoonoses, looks at vaccine and antiviral drug development, and introduces fascinating organizations like the Section of Future Threats and Determinants, a part of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, whose enormous job it is to anticipate the infectious diseases of the future. Andiman stresses the importance of understanding the consequences of allowing zoonotic viruses to cross international borders, 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 at Yale Medical School. He founded the AIDS Care Program at Yale-New Haven Hospital and is the Medical Director of the Pediatric AIDS Care Program at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital.