Virusphere: From Common Colds to Ebola Epidemics-Why We Need the Viruses That Plague Us

by Frank Ryan

Overview

A fascinating and long overdue examination of viruses - from what they are and what they do, to the vital role they have played in human history.What are viruses? Do they rely on genes, like all other forms of life? Do they follow the same patterns of evolution as plants and animals?Dr. Frank Ryan answers these questions and many more in a sweeping tour of illnesses caused by viruses. He examines the common cold, measles, chicken pox, herpes, mumps, and rubella, as well as less familiar maladies, such as rabies, "breakbone fever," hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola, and virus-induced cancers. Along the way, readers will learn about the behaviors of viruses and what drives them to infect a human host. Ryan explains the role of viruses in the evolution of life, revealing how viruses have changed us at the most intimate level, helping to make us quintessentially human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633886056
Publisher:	Prometheus Books
Publication date:	02/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	460 KB

About the Author

Frank Ryan is a consultant physician and pioneering evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield. He is the bestselling author of The Forgotten Plague--a New York Times Book of the Year--and Darwin's Blind Spot, which was recommended by Charlie Munger at the 2003 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. He is also the author of The Mysterious World of the Human Genome, Virolution, and many other books. Ryan was named Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, with the express purpose of developing his evolutionary concepts and helping to translate evolutionary science into medicine. He is a Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Linnean Society of London.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 What Are Viruses? 7

2 Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases 13

3 A Plague Upon a Plague 23

4 Every Parent's Nightmare 33

5 A Bug Versus a Virus 43

6 A Coincidental Paralysis 53

7 Deadly Viruses 61

8 An All-American Plague 71

9 Lurker Viruses 85

10 How Flu Viruses Reinvent Themselves 101

11 A Lesson from a Machiavellian Virus 111

12 The Mystery of Ebola 123

13 The Mercurial Nature of the Zika Virus 135

14 A Taste for the Liver 145

15 Warts and All 153

16 Lilliputian Giants 163

17 Are Viruses Alive? 173

18 Inspiring Terror - and Delight 183

19 The Ecology of the Oceans 191

20 The Virosphere 199

21 The Origins of the Placental Mammals 207

22 Viruses in the Origins of Life 221

23 The Fourth Domain? 231

Bibliography and References 241

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

""A fascinating book that is well structured, with short, absorbing chapters. . . . Virusphere makes an engrossing and fervent argument that he is on to something.”

—The Inquisitive Biologist

From the Publisher