San Antonio College Library

"In this book, Elizabeth Davidson shares amazing stories about diseases of insects and other invertebrates important to people - and about the scientists who learned to use those diseases to control pests and create products beneficial to humans. Focusing on insect-microbial interactions crucial to public health, she tells detective stories ranging across global history, from the silkworm farms of nineteenth-century Japan to the research labs of modern...

"Informed and accessible overview of viruses and pandemics, how our immune system combats them, and how diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies work to form the foundation of public health."--

Overview: 1976 a deadly virus emerged from the Congo forest. As swiftly as it came, it disappeared, leaving no trace. Over the four decades since, Ebola has emerged sporadically, each time to devastating effect. It can kill up to 90 percent of its victims. In between these outbreaks, it is untraceable, hiding deep in the jungle. The search is on to find Ebola's elusive host animal. And until we find it, Ebola will continue to strike. Acclaimed science...

Viruses are the ultimate parasites: they infect cells and hijack their molecular machinery in order to survive, often destroying the host cell in the process. In so doing, they present a major challenge to human health and well-being, with the continual emergence of new viral strains placing huge demands on healthcare systems internationally. This book is an introduction to the subject for anyone who needs to understand how viruses impact on human...

"AIDS was first described in 1981 and just under three years later the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was discovered. Confirming that HIV causes AIDS--now accepted by virtually all scientists--took rather longer. But where did HIV come from? When did it first infect us? How did it manage to spread so widely?"--Jacket.

In the autumn of 2002 in southern China, a previously unknown virus jumped the species barrier from animal to man and sparked the first global epidemic of the new century. The disease sped along the air routes of a globalized world, spreading within months to thirty-one countries on every continent. Before it was reined in by a remarkable international scientific effort, the SARS virus demonstrated human society's vulnerability to disease. New infectious...

In 2006, the Wall Street pioneer and philanthropist Ray Chambers flicked through some holiday snapshots taken by his friend, development economist Jeff Sachs, and remarked on the placid beauty of a group of sleeping Malawian children. 'They're not sleeping, ' Sachs told him. 'They're in malarial comas.' A few days later, they were all dead. Chambers had long avoided the public eye, but this moment sparked his determination to coordinate an unprecedented,...

"This compelling new account traces the origins and development of the most dramatic and destructive disease epidemic of modern times. Jacques Pepin looks back to the early twentieth-century events in Africa that triggered the emergence of HIV/AIDS and the subsequent evolution and transmission of the disease before it was first officially identified in 1981. The book focuses on the specific circumstances in Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian...