Of pandemic panics, and scurrying beasties, of singing and flight, and things that go bump in the night

All the big killer diseases-measles, tuberculosis, smallpox-have come to us from animals and have decided they like us better. Other diseases, such as rabies, Poker Players' Pneumonia, and Dum-Dum fever, may visit us now and then, but they really prefer their animal homes. Then there are the "emerging" diseases, like mad cow disease, SARS, and avian flu, which have dropped in to check us out, but we don't know whether they will join us as permanent residents or whether they are just tourists passing through.

This book presents the various groups of animal diseases, explains what it is about our lifestyle that encourages them to visit (what we eat, where we hike, how we like to crowd together, how we love to insert juicy appendages into each other), and offers suggestions for how to keep them at bay. The book also points out that such diseases must be looked at from an ecological, cultural, and economic point of view as well as from a biological point of view. In Kathamandu, for example, dealing with Hydatid disease, which causes cysts in various parts of the body, means taking into account the traditional relationship between dogs and humans, butchering practices, lack of water and adequate food, the structure of neighborhoods, and food preferences, among other factors. On one level, measures such as washing your hands with soap, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and using insect repellent when walking in the woods, and cooking food well can help prevent diseases transmitted by animals. But on another level, to resolve the more complicated problems of emerging diseases from animals means fundamentally rethinking what our place is in the world, how we think about progress, and how we do science-indeed, how we construct and use knowledge about the world around us.

Authoritative yet entertaining, The Chickens Fight Back expertly guides us through pandemics, epidemics, and diseases of every feather and presents a thoughtful analysis of how to deal with them.

David Waltner-Toews is a veterinarian and epidemiologist specializing in diseases people get from animals by living with them, sharing their environments, or eating them. He is a professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph in Ontario, founding president of Veterinarians without Borders/Veterinaires sans Frontieres-Canada, and author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including One Animal Among Many: Gaia, Goats and Garlic; Food, Sex and Salmonella: The Risks of Environmental Intimacy; and Good for Your Animals, Good For You. He has also published two textbooks and one work of fiction. He lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

08/24/06