The Origins of AIDS
$29.99 USD
- Author: Jacques Pepin, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada
- Date Published: December 2011
- availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
- format: Adobe eBook Reader
- isbn: 9781139119856
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It is now thirty years since the discovery of AIDS but its origins continue to puzzle doctors and scientists. Inspired by his own experiences working as an infectious diseases physician in Africa, Jacques Pepin looks back to the early twentieth-century events in Africa that triggered the emergence of HIV/AIDS and traces its subsequent development into the most dramatic and destructive epidemic of modern times. He shows how the disease was first transmitted from chimpanzees to man and then how urbanization, prostitution, and large-scale colonial medical campaigns intended to eradicate tropical diseases combined to disastrous effect to fuel the spread of the virus from its origins in Léopoldville to the rest of Africa, the Caribbean and ultimately worldwide. This is an essential new perspective on HIV/AIDS and on the lessons that must be learnt if we are to avoid provoking another pandemic in the future.
Read more- Comprehensive and coherent history of events that led to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, which will appeal to those with direct or personal links with the disease itself or the study of it
- Adds historical perspective to recent molecular work on the chronology of the development of the virus
- Emphasises how colonialism and the urbanisation of central Africa, as well as interventions to control tropical diseases, created the right environment for HIV/AIDS to develop
Reviews & endorsements
'Despite the scientific advances made since the discovery of HIV, questions of the pandemic's origin still trouble us. Why us? Why now? How could this happen? Pepin's remarkable book provides, at last, a comprehensive answer. Three decades of scientific and historical research are distilled into an engaging, highly readable, and sometimes disturbing account of HIV's journey that will interest students and researchers of the virus and its fallible host.' Oliver G. Pybus, University of Oxford
See more reviews'In this scholarly and immensely readable account of the origin of AIDS, Dr Pepin draws on his personal experience of working in central Africa and his extensive knowledge of African history, as well as his training in infectious diseases, virology and epidemiology. Unlike others who have tackled the subject, he comes to it with an open mind, and this account is likely to be definitive.' David Mabey, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
'This first major re-assessment of the origin of AIDS since Hooper's The River, delves into the extensive archives on the AIDS epidemic. Weaving together the findings of many researchers currently working on the topic, it will undoubtedly stimulate discussion on a subject of great concern and interest: the historical record of the emergence of new viruses.' William H. Schneider, Indiana University
'The origin and early epidemiology of the Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (HIV) has been perplexing and controversial. Jacques Pepin provides a unique insight as an investigator who has spent years in several African countries and has contributed substantially to our knowledge of routes of transmission. We must learn from this history if we wish to avoid future pandemics.' Allan Ronald, Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba
'A great book on the evolutionary origin of HIV and the possible role of cultural and medical practices in Central Africa in the dissemination of the virus.' Max Essex, Lasker Professor, Harvard University and author of Saturday Is For Funerals
'This book is an excellent, fair-minded attempt to elucidate a much-contested story.' Literary Review
'This is a beautifully written book, which explains epidemiological and scientific concepts such as phylogenetic analysis in clear and simple language. Pepin has assembled a vast amount of information from a wide variety of sources, and paints a clear, coherent and convincing account of the origins of AIDS. This book is required reading for anyone with a serious interest in infectious diseases.' Sexually Transmitted Infection Journal
'Extensively referenced, [this] well-written book reads like a detective story, while at the same time providing a didactic introduction to epidemiology and evolutionary genetics. As far as the origins of AIDS are concerned, unless some completely new evidence emerges, it will be difficult to come up with a better explanation than Pepin's.' Science
'Superb ... Pépin rightly argues that, apart from social factors promoting HIV spread, inherent properties of the virus must determine its fitness to become pandemic. He also provides the best analysis I have read of the declining HIV-2 epidemic in West Africa.' Nature
'An impressive feat of scientific scholarship … absorbing throughout, interweaving quantitative data with historical narrative and lively biographies.' The Lancet
'This is scientific history at its most compelling … Pepin's achievement is formidable. He has mastered a vast technical literature in French and English, exploited the archives and material remains of colonial and postcolonial Africa, and knows his African history to boot. He writes with grace and feeling, and makes accessible the scientific and clinical issues. Above all, he comes across as a humane and caring doctor. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the scourge that has defined our times.' Bill Bynum, The Times Literary Supplement
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×Product details
- Date Published: December 2011
- format: Adobe eBook Reader
- isbn: 9781139119856
- contains: 24 b/w illus. 7 maps
- availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Out of Africa
2. The source
3. The timing
4. The cut hunter
5. Societies in transition
6. The oldest trade
7. Injections and the transmission of viruses
8. The legacies of colonial medicine I: French Equatorial Africa and Cameroun
9. The legacies of colonial medicine II: the Belgian Congo
10. The other human immunodeficiency viruses
11. From the Congo to the Caribbean
12. The blood trade
13. The globalisation
14. Assembling the puzzle
15. Epilogue: lessons learned.Instructors have used or reviewed this title for the following courses
- Emergence of Global Health
- Endocrinology
- From Athens to AIDS: Historiography of Plagues & Epidemics
- Global History of Health
- Historical Methods, Environmental History
- Introduction to Public Policy
- Plagues and Politics
- Public Health and Community Nursing
- The politics of epidemic
- VIROLOGY
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