Beasts of the Earth: Animals Humans and Disease E. Fuller Torrey and Robert H. Yolken New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press 2005. 191 pp. $23.95 (cloth)

摘要

Although we have always coinhabited the earth with animals and their microorganisms (often in close proximity because of domestication), zoonotic infections tend to make the headlines today. is therefore timely. Torrey and Yolken present a compendium of infectious diseases set in a historical context. They make the ubiquity of microorganisms as part of the planet's biomass amply clear, and they correctly stress that there is no escaping them. Despite this undeniable fact, are individual instances or outbreaks of zoonotic infection really more common in today's world than they have been in the past? Although the authors promise to provide evidence of the “increasing incidence of animal-associated human diseases,” I think they fail to convince the reader. This could be because the evidence is indeed lacking, barring a few well-known exceptions, such as the likely animal origins of the coronavirus responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome.