Their Fate Is Our Fate by Peter Doherty

**This review is part of the Amazon Vine Program**

What do birds have to do with global warming, or swine flu, or other alarming occurrences in our world? A lot actually. Doherty explains just how our avian friends are linked to the health of the world and what we can tell from their reactions to it.

In nineteen chapters, this book covers a myriad of different topics relating to health of birds and health of humans. The use of sentinel birds is explained (ever wonder why there are sometimes chickens on golf courses?), what can be derived from studying embryos, Bird Flu, Bugs, the Hawaiian wipeout, cancer, metal detection, and global warming are just some of the topics covered. There are also extensive notes from the author on different topics and a list of Latin binomials for common bird names. The author also provides further reading, references, and other assorted information.

This is a science heavy book and is not for pleasure reading. Not being experienced in the sciences there were several key medical phrases that I had to do an internet search on just to figure out what the author was talking about. While it is written in relatively easy to understand language, unless you were a science major, there are some things that just can't be put into layman terms. An example sentence from this book would be "Inspired by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray crystallographic pictures (see Chapter 9), which Jim sighted (unbeknown to Rosalind) during the course of a visit to Maurice Wilkins at King's College, London, Watson and Crick built the iconic physical model that shows binary pairings of the deoxyribose nucleic acis (DNA)-adenine-thymine (AT) and guanosine-cytosine (GS)-can assemble as a double helix (pg.123)." This is how the book is written and if that sentence isn't too your liking you probably shouldn't pursue reading it. If it instead piqued your interest, go for it! There's a wealth of knowledge to be had. My only complaint about the writing itself would be the occasional name dropping by the author, but the sporadic additions of humor more than make up for it.

So do you learn about birds in this book? To an extent. It's actually more about diseases and bugs and things that happen to birds rather than learning about any one individual bird itself. Which is good, because it sets out to explain what birds have to do with health and I think it follows that topic quite well. I was surprised and intrigued by all the different topics because I thought it would primarily be about viruses. So the added information on global warming and heavy metals was a bonus. And since it's all presented as science, with references to back it, I was able to feel confident that the information being presented was correct since I am definitely not an expert in the field. I volunteer at a bird rescue and am passingly familiar with some diseases in waterfowl, but found that this book helped me learn more than I ever thought existed. And it made me want to learn more.

A very informative book and while it is high-level, it's something that makes you aspire to learn more, even if you don't quite understand it all on the first read through. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in viruses, birds, and science.





Their Fate Is Our Fate
Copyright 2013
247 pages

No Time To Lose by Peter Piot

Ebola, AIDS, these are viruses that the mere mention can cause people to become worried and alarmed. While there have been many campaigns to bring awareness to the causes that seek to treat and prevent them, there is still a certain stigma that hangs on to them. Peter Piot, in his work as UNAIDS head, seeks to reducer that stigma and help prevent the spread of AIDS with his work, and wrote this book to accompany those ideas.

Piot started off in medical school with the notion that he wanted to specialize in infectious diseases. And he was told no to bother since they were disappearing from the world. Luckily, he didn't listen, and was on hand to research the first few deadly outbreaks of Ebola and then be a part of the research team for AIDS. His longest work would be with AIDS and he would be a part of several organizations, including USAIDS, throughout his career. The book showed a little of his initial time spent in Zaire working with the Ebola virus and then the larger part of it would be about AIDS and the numerous meetings and people he met to discuss the worldwide effects of the virus.

There are a lot of people in this book. So many that keeping track of them would be absolutely mind boggling and if you didn't know them in real life or hadn't followed them through research papers and other documents, you'd be completely lost. How do I know this? I was completely lost as I didn't know who any of these people were and they were briefly mentioned only to be whisked away again. Piot himself is a clear narrator but while he describes a little bit of his homelife, we only really know his work life, and even that more on the bureaucratic side of things rather than the medical work with actual patients.

This book alternated between being fascinating and boring. The first part, where Piot is working with the Ebola virus, is the interesting part. He details the symptoms, how it was spreading through the population and what they were trying to do to treat it and stop its progression. There are some parts when he is working with AIDS that shares this depth of detail and look into the virus itself. But sadly, the larger portion of this book is devoted to his meetings with people and traveling around trying to defend his organization's actions and other such administrative detail. Unless you like this sort of paperwork type of writing, it is not interesting in the least. While the work they were all doing is very important, it just didn't translate well to the page and I don't think it helped the cause any. Learning about the disease and the people effected by it (personal stories of the people) would have been much more effective.

This is a memoir though and I can't judge it too harshly on that aspect. This is Piot's life and maybe he wrote it to show everything that he did, rather than make it a tool of awareness for infectious disease. Still, when you go into it thinking it will be about something else, it does disappoint in parts.

No Time to Lose
Copyright 2012
379 pages

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

So I'm sure I'm not the only kid who squirted a ton of whipped cream in her mouth and then ran around pretending to be rabid. With a disease that the majority of the population thinks is eradicated, it's easy to make light of what was once thought of as a death sentence. This book explores Rabies and its manifestations throughout history and its current movement in the modern world.

People still die of rabies. And a lot of people don't realize that fact. They think it's gone because of all the vaccinations and other such preventative measures. Even way back in history though, rabies has been a problem. This book covers the whole timeline. It also covers treatments, the development of the vaccine and other methods used for healing. And it gets into the nitty gritty of the disease itself and its symptoms.

A bit focus of this book was on Louis Pasteur. Everybody has heard of Pasteurization but few know that Pasteur also developed the rabies vaccine. I certainly didn't know that until I read this book. While he was the primary person focused on this book, it did go into detail about a lot of beliefs from people on where rabies came from (some very racist in nature), how people chose to heal the disease before the vaccine (very strange stuff), and new advances for helping people in which the disease has already progressed.

This book was engaging and well written. It's one of those books on histories that you actually want to read and find the scientific stuff fascinating instead of tedious. Sure there were a few tedious parts, especially when we got to the werewolf/vampire connection (or maybe that was just my personal preference stepping in), but I did appreciate the light approach the authors took to such a terrible disease. It was approachable and in being approachable it will educate a larger audience. While I do wish there was a little more science involved, the way everything was explained will be largely understandable to most people as it doesn't get too technical. And that's probably why I found it easy to become immersed in the book and even learn a few things.

A very well written book on a fascinating subject. A little gross and disturbing at times, but still very informative.

Rabid
Copyright 2012
236 pages