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1-Page Summary of Spillover
Overall Summary
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is a 2012 book about how animal infections can affect humans. It was nominated for several awards, including the National Association of Science Writers award and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology.
In Spillover, Quammen’s narrative alternates between the outbreak of recent emerging diseases and scientific discoveries that made such advancements possible. He routinely intersperses these health mysteries with accounts of his own travels and personal meetings with experts so that he can meet zoonotic diseases in their environments.
The author begins with a story about a mysterious virus that sickened horses and a few people in Australia. Scientists identified the reservoir host of the virus, which helped them understand how it was spreading.
Ebola is a deadly virus that infects humans and animals. The author of the book goes to Africa, where he meets both doctors and naturalists who are working on Ebola research. It’s difficult to track Ebola outbreaks because they’re usually brief and occur in remote villages. Years of patient research suggest that bats carry the virus, but it hasn’t been proven conclusively yet.
Quammen uses his study of malaria to examine the history of health threats and scientific responses to them. Since the early 20th century, scientists have been trying to understand how diseases spread and how they can be stopped. Quammen consults with many experts in order to understand viral mutation as well as disease transmission.
The 2003 outbreak of SARS was scary because it spread quickly and no one knew what caused it. People who had eaten wild animals were spreading the disease, so health officials took action to stop them from eating those animals. Luckily, people didn’t need to worry about catching SARS until they started showing symptoms.
Next, Quammen talks about diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans. These include psittacosis (from parrots), Q fever (from cows) and Lyme disease. He also mentions Nipah virus which is spread by fruit bats and was first identified in Malaysia. This demonstrates how viruses can exploit human behavior—in this case, the local custom of drinking palm sap—to spread rapidly among people who have no immunity against it.
Quammen then turns to HIV-AIDS, the last “Big One” of zoonotic diseases. It is similar to other zoonotic diseases in that it depends on interdisciplinary efforts and reveals the role of human-animal interactions.
To wrap up his story and his argument, Quammen considers the potential outbreak of a new influenza strain. He reminds us that we are animals with an ecological role in nature. As long as this is true, scientists will help us understand threats to our health by studying outbreaks like bird flu. We need to be smart enough to avoid disasters such as pandemics.
Part 2: “Thirteen Gorillas”
The next spillover Quammen investigates occurred in Africa, specifically a small village on the Gabon/Congo border called Mayibout 2. Several villagers became ill after eating a chimpanzee. Eventually, 31 people in total became ill and 21 died, with a fatality rate of close to 70%. A disease specialist named Eric Leroy determined that the disease was Ebola and that it originated from the chimp.
Quammen then goes into a story about a field biologist named Mike Fay who was surveying the wildlife in that area. A lot of people from Mayibout 2 were helping him with this work, and some of them had connections to the outbreak. They reported that all those who became sick had touched an infected chimpanzee, and they also said that 13 gorillas had been found dead nearby. Fay’s expedition relied on more precise counting and tallying but came up with the same conclusion: The gorilla population was rapidly declining because of Ebola.
