Book review: ‘Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic,’ by David Quammen

Lynn Donaldson
David Quammen
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Right now, somewhere in the world, an animal is bleeding or excreting something bad. What that animal is, and where, isn’t clear; it could be a chimpanzee in Cameroon or a bat in Borneo. Its bodily fluids are ferrying a nasty virus out of a wild creature and into the environment. One day the virus will spill over — leap from its host animal to humans.

You’ve heard this scenario if you’ve read The Hot Zone, watched Contagion or otherwise dipped into the vast literature of disease doom. But you’ve never heard it as eloquently and authoritatively told as in David Quammen’s new must-read book.

Quammen, a writer best known for his masterful Song of the Dodo on island biogeography and extinction, has now moved into even scarier territory. This is the realm of zoonoses — diseases that can jump from animals to humans. Think Ebola, SARS, AIDS. All are caused by rogue viruses, those microscopic organisms whose entire purpose is to hijack the cellular machinery of another living being and turn it to the virus’ will.

Against such menaces, humanity’s first line of defense is science. Hunting zoonoses is dirty work, and researchers brave horrendous field conditions to collect crucial samples. In Bangladesh, Quammen tags along with a team of ecologists who snare flying bats in the dark, from a rooftop. “Keep your mouth closed when you look up,” a seasoned biologist tells the rookie writer. Remember, the bats’ urine might contain Nipah virus.

It’s that close proximity between animal and human, the constant pressing of 7 billion people into habitats and regions once left well enough alone, that radically raises the risk of spillover. Often people deliberately make things worse. In China, the “Era of Wild Flavor” led to trafficking and consuming of practically every meat possible, the weirder the better. (Bamboo rats make an appearance on Quammen’s dinner plate. In case you were wondering, the meat “was mild, subtle, faintly sweet. There were many small femurs and ribs.”)

In parts of Africa, villagers prize every food they can get, even if that means a chimp carcass found rotting in the forest. Such a discovery may have given rise to the greatest spillover in history, nearly a century ago, when HIV leapt from a chimp into somebody’s cut finger in southeastern Cameroon. Quammen spins this moment into a speculative and spellbinding narrative that erases the line between humans and other animals. A virus does not care whose cells carry it, as long as it can multiply and adapt and evolve and thrive. Today, more than 25 million people have died from AIDS.

Discovering where and how HIV spilled over was a triumph of disease detective work, but what can it tell us about the Next Big One, a future viral pandemic? Sadly, not much. Science can wait, and watch, and prepare — but not prevent.

When that next big one strikes, Spillover is the book you’ll want to have on your shelf. If only to say you saw it coming.

Alexandra Witze is a contributing editor for Science News magazine. She is based in Boulder, Colo.


Animal Infections and the

Next Human Pandemic

David Quammen

(Norton, $28.95)

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