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A Planet of Viruses: Second Edition Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition
by Carl Zimmer (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 81 ratings
Length: 128 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Di R
5.0 out of 5 stars Who would have thought viruses could be so interestingReviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 October 2019
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A great little book containing some fascinating information on viruses. I was rather hoping it would contain some information on how they've been used in recombinant DNA technology, so maybe the author could get to work on a further publication to address this subject.
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Charlotte Davis
4.0 out of 5 stars A good selection of articlesReviewed in Germany on 23 February 2020
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I was expecting a book about viruses and their influence on our heritage and environment, but what I received was a collection of articles.
I know the author as I have frequently read his articles in the New York Times and always enjoyed them. This selection is excellent as it represents various aspects of viruses. These articles are written so that they can be understood by everyone, and contain new information that adds to the fascination of these tiny forms of life.
I recommend this book to all who want to get to know the world of viruses and realize that not all of them are life-threatening.
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Peter Davies
3.0 out of 5 stars If you want to learn a lot about viruses this ...Reviewed in Canada on 10 April 2018
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If you want to learn a lot about viruses this isn’t the book for you. Light reading the book can be read in a few hours. Contains some very interesting stories such as about. Ebola or Smallpox. It is quite humorous at times and you do learn a few facts. I guess there is only so many facts that can fit into 100 pages.
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A Planet of Viruses
by
Carl Zimmer (Goodreads Author)
4.01 · Rating details · 2,833 ratings · 304 reviews
Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We are most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or the flu, but viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long, in fact, that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in caves miles underground.
This fascinating book explores the hidden world of viruses—a world that we all inhabit. Here Carl Zimmer, popular science writer and author of Discover magazine’s award-winning blog The Loom, presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come. In this eye-opening tour of the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life as we know it, we learn that some treatments for the common cold do more harm than good; that the world’s oceans are home to an astonishing number of viruses; and that the evolution of HIV is now in overdrive, spawning more mutated strains than we care to imagine.
The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer “as fine a science essayist as we have.” A Planet of Viruses is sure to please his many fans and further enhance his reputation as one of America’s most respected and admired science journalists. (less)
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Hardcover, 122 pages
Published September 15th 2011 by University Of Chicago Press
ISBN
0226983358 (ISBN13: 9780226983356)
Edition Language
English
URL
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo11461703.html
Feb 12, 2019Petra-X rated it liked it
Shelves: medicine-science, reviewed, 2019-100-reviews, 2019-read
My third Carl Zimmer book in a week. It isn't an outstanding 10-star as She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity or a brilliant and illuminating (and gross) Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, worth 5 stars. Instead it is a very short book about viruses and there really isn't much to say about viruses.
I did learn about phages and phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics and how the Russians have pursued this therapy, but being as antibiotics are cheaper and easier to make and sell for a lot of money, the capitalist West more or less abandoned it. As the overuse of antibiotics encourages resistant mutations in viruses, so will other treatments have to be explored.
As most people who read up on HIV/AIDS (and it was more or less impossible not to in the 90s) I knew about retroviruses with their single 'thread' of dna. I knew about vaccinations, about the eradication of smallpox, of why Ebola is self-limiting and that even viruses might have viruses too! The debate on whether viruses are alive or not still continues.
So that was that. 3 star. (less)
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Jun 11, 2014Alex rated it liked it
Shelves: science, favorite-reviews, 2017
The thing with me is that I don't get anything. Here's an example: I want to find out about viruses, so I track down the best book I can about viruses and I read it, and now if you ask me what a virus is I can say things. They hijack a cell's normal function so that it makes copies of the virus's DNA, instead of copies of their own DNA. Something like that. Amazing, I am so smart. But what if you ask me what a cell is? Or what DNA is? I can keep saying things - the cell is the factory of the human body, DNA is the blueprint for life - but I'm just saying things, dude. I'm a fucking parrot. Understanding a thing metaphorically is not the same as understanding the actual thing. I don't really, at a core level, know what I'm talking about, almost ever.
metaphor
So I know it's sortof a cliche to get all "the older I get the more I realize I don't know" or whatever it is old people say, and also it's untrue in my case because I didn't think I knew anything before either, but at a certain point you start to wonder, like, why am I even reading books. I guess it might help if I was at a party and chatting with a virologist and he wanted to say something interesting but there's a certain base level of knowledge I'd need in order to understand the more interesting thing? haha I don't go to parties and all my friends are unemployed graphic designers.
Carl Zimmer is not that virologist who has something interesting to say. I wasn't all that into this book. Look, Siddhartha Mukherjee is the gold standard for talking about medical shit in an engaging and vaguely understandable way, right? Carl Zimmer's nowhere close. On the scale between textbook and Mukherjee, Zimmer's pretty low down. I was bored.
Also he says to take zinc for a cold and I'm pretty sure that's bullshit.
not totally clear on to what extent this is a metaphor
He does, finally, at the end, talk about whether viruses count as "alive" or not, and I think that debate is super interesting. We've come up with a definition of "life," which like all definitions is sortof "decide what you think is alive and then describe that and there you are," so in other words it's bullshit, but anyway what it is is you have to be able to reproduce, and some other stuff, and viruses don't exactly reproduce, right? They make other peoples' cells do it for them. So does that count? What if viruses feel really bad about making us sick, and they keep having conferences to try to come up with ways to reproduce without making people sick, but maybe there's a contingent of like alt-right viruses who don't believe in sickness. This is the interesting part - saying we don't know shit about colds is not the interesting part - and there isn't enough of it. I also wanted to talk about rabies, because rabies is bananas, and he didn't. My thing with rabies is, it gets into your saliva, that makes sense, but then it makes you want to bite everyone so your saliva gets into them? That's so awesome! How does it do that? How did evolution come up with that? I don't know! I don't understand any of this! (less)
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Nov 16, 2012Daniel Bastian rated it it was amazing
Shelves: reviewed
“Viruses are biology’s living matrix.”
We share little in common with our forebears’ understanding of the universe. In ancient times the earth was ensconced by a dome or firmament which held back rain and other effusions from above. Drought and wetness were tangible indicators of the pantheon’s impression of earthly behavior, with a blue sky betokening the rain that lay just beyond the earth’s protective shell. For many of our ancestors, the stars influenced the health of those on earth; for others, calamity and human hardship could be ascribed to nothing more than the shifting dispositions of the local deities. Maladies of the skin and throat and other physiological dysfunction were regarded as plagues, or instances of pestilential terror cast down as punishment. It was not until our discovery of the virus that these superordinary affiliations were shorn in favor of the vanishingly tiny world thriving right under our noses.
Viruses have been invading other life forms for billions of years with nary an invitation, yet our knowledge of this relatively young science is still fairly limited. Helming this microcosmic thrill ride in A Planet of Viruses is Carl Zimmer, first-place recipient of the 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism competition and one of the most illustrious science reporters of our time. Author of Microcosm and Parasite Rex, pathogen science has long been his forte. In his latest and most abbreviated work, Zimmer marshals his treasure of insights and provides us a sweeping introduction to this fascinating, if ineluctably unnerving world.
The book is organized as a compilation of well-connected short essays, a format that suits the material well. Each of the chapters spotlights a specific strain or type of virus which has wreaked considerable chaos on human welfare–from rhinovirus, smallpox, and influenza to HIV and West Nile virus–and Zimmer’s characteristic story-centric style makes each vignette as rousing as the last. As you progress, Zimmer slowly raises the curtain on virus ingenuity, weaving accessible tales and the latest research and statistics throughout.
The Infiltrator
Since viruses first breached the scientific periphery in the 19th century, over 5,000 separate strains have been identified, with possibly tens of thousands more harboring in the oceans and lining the guts of every species on earth. While they can vary broadly in physical size, shape, number of genes, and mobility within and between hosts, they all borrow from the same playbook. At the first, a virus requires a host to survive, unlike bacteria, so its blinkered priority is to gain access to the cellular machinery of other life forms. Whether it’s animals and plants or bacteria and archaea, a virus does not discriminate.
I like to think of them as the world's smallest stealth agent, as resourceful as they are deadly. In what makes Ethan Hunt look like an amateur, a virus has the ability to infiltrate a host's cells in a variety of ways, a skill which amplifies as evolution takes its course. Once the virus descends upon the host's genetic structure, it can really begin its work. With full access to the genetic database the virus begins installing its own DNA onto the cells of its host, overriding the host's DNA. At this point, the virus is replicated by the host's hijacked DNA at a prodigious rate until many thousands of identical copies line the inside of the host's cells. Depending on the genetic mixture, this assimilation can disrupt a host gene's ability to make proteins, unleashing havoc on the unwitting custodian, or the virus presence can trigger the release of antibodies which scramble to shut down the intruders, subjecting the host to nasty symptoms in the process.
There is ongoing debate over whether viruses qualify as a form of life. They cannot survive outside of a host cell and are absent any kind of cellular architecture, rendering them little more than small, self-assembling clusters of nucleic acids. Even so, Zimmer is quick to point out their indispensable role in shaping and sustaining life over the aeons. “We humans are an inextricable blend of mammal and virus. Remove our virus-derived genes, and we would be unable to reproduce.” (p. 93)
Viruses have also been implicated in the origin of life, as their capacity for self-replication may hold the keys to how precellular material jumpstarted the chain of life on earth. The uninvited stowaways have been shuffling genes among different host species ever since, comprising as much as 8% of the human genome. Thus not only have viruses been a tremendous force in the evolution of life on this planet, they are essential to our survival.
Zimmer also discloses plainly just how near are viruses and other infectious agents. Each of our trillions of cells can contain hundreds of viruses and bacteria. Human papillomavirus (HPV), most known for inflicting cervical cancer and killing over 270,000 women every year, is actually quite common and can be found nestled in your skin cells. We constantly shed our outermost layer of skin after cell death, depositing the virus-laden DNA all around us. That means that right now you likely have more than a few HPV viruses on the desk and laptop in front of you. Not the cheeriest thought perhaps, but you will find solace in the fact that the majority of HPV strains are benign and pose no immediate risk.
Cat, Meet Mouse
It is true that the lion's share of known viruses introduce no changes to infected cells or simply lie dormant within our DNA. But it is also true that pathogens evolve more quickly than any known form of life. For this reason microbe trajectories always lie one step ahead of us and are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Zimmer relates this chilling reality by describing why scientists are urging against the over-use of antibiotics. Not only do antibacterials have a null effect on viruses, they upset the delicate ecosystem inside our bodies and "incentivize" bacteria to evolve countermeasures, potentially resulting in more noxious versions of both benign and harmful strains.
In response to this dilemma, medical biologists now have their eyes on an alternative approach to fighting bacteria: phage therapy, an area in which precious little research has been conducted. Somewhat confusingly, a bacteriophage is a virus used to combat resilient bacteria. Essentially, pitting pathogen against pathogen. Zimmer tells of a lab-engineered phage (pictured below) developed by a team from Boston University and MIT that can wipe out 99.997% of E. coli strains. More impressively, “scientists at the Eliava Institute have developed a dressing for wounds that is impregnated with half a dozen different phages, capable of killing the six most common kinds of bacteria that infect skin wounds.” (p. 38) Among many microbiologists, this approach to resistant bacteria is a heavily favored alternative to antibiotics. But until a wider body of research is explored, such precision warfare is confined to the lab.
Exit: Stage Left
By all accounts, the most uplifting installment is that of smallpox, which Zimmer recounts in a coda entitled "The Long Goodbye." When this dark scourge first started replicating inside of human hosts remains an open question. Telltale signs can be seen in the 3,000 year old mummified corpse of Pharaoh Ramses V, while other scientists date its emergence as early as 10,000 BC. Based on extant medical records and fatality rates, it’s been estimated that smallpox caused 400,000 European deaths each year during the 18th century and another 300-500 million deaths in the 20th century alone, bringing down three empires in the process. Its final death toll across human history and its legacy in shaping civilization may never be fully realized, but it met a worthy competitor in one Edward Jenner.
Among the venerated elite in science history, Jenner used cowpox, a member of the same viral family as smallpox, to inoculate potential smallpox victims. It worked, and while Jenner did not discover the antigenic properties activated by vaccination, it was his “trial by fire” testing and scrupulous documentation of his findings that led to its widespread adoption against smallpox. In 1979, the World Health Organization declared smallpox an eradicated disease. The unflinching bravura of those who risked their lives in the global eradication effort functions as a testament to human possibility. WHO’s vaccination campaigns, which achieved success largely by isolating the infected from the non-infected and administering vaccines to quarantined communities, is perhaps the greatest success story in all of medicine and lends hope for the outcome of future travails.
Closing Thoughts
Thanks to one of the finest science communicators today, the remaining essays assembled in A Planet of Viruses are every bit as informative and accessible. As stepladder to the scientific community, Zimmer has a knack for engaging readers of all stripes, from the lay reader to the armchair scientist to anyone who simply likes reading good stories. His way is precise, not overly simplified, choosing just the right level of linguistic precision to divulge this teeming underworld to his readers. While certainly not as detailed as some of his earlier expositions, this brilliant anthology serves as a perfect preamble to the bustling field of microlife. Clocking in at just under 100 pages, I highly recommend you target this one for your next free weekend, preferably before, and not after, having eaten.
Note: This review is republished from my official website. Click through for additional footnotes and imagery. (less)
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Jan 26, 2016Lilo rated it really liked it
Recommends it for: everyone who is looking for a short-read about viruses
Shelves: health, biology, medicine, science
This is a very interesting book, and I am glad I read it. My only beef with this book is that it is too short. After reading Carl Zimmer's outstanding book "Parasite Rex", I had expected more.
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Feb 22, 2012Matt rated it really liked it
I liked reading this book, and I think so did many retroviruses I carry.
I've read a lot of Zimmer's blogs and magazine articles, and I've even seen him at a symposium, but this is the first of his books I've tackled. I like his work because he takes on difficult subjects and explains them to the masses in a very approachable format. I actually didn't expect this to be quite as short and easy a read as it was, but this was practically airplane reading many short vignettes enabling easy stopping ...more
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Jun 20, 2013Elizabeth Theiss rated it liked it
Shelves: epdemiology, science
Don't be deterred by the pedestrian science in the first few chapters of Planet of Viruses. It gets better. And by better, I mean more interesting and mysterious.
Viruses are fragments of genetic code encased in protein with the capacity to invade cells and commandeer cell resources to reproduce the virus, ultimately bursting the cell wall to release replicated viruses. Certain viruses have been harnessed by animals and humans to play critical roles in the life of the organism. For example, human placentas are formed in part by the activity of specialized viruses. Viruses can perform photosynthesis and are estimated to account for about a quarter of earth's photosynthetic activity.
I almost abandoned this book at the end of the second chapter because it failed to provide anything beyond the usual descriptions of famous viruses ( influenza, HIV, etc.). So glad I kept reading. I will reread this one again with pleasure. (less)
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Jan 22, 2016Dov Zeller rated it really liked it
Shelves: sciency-naturish, non-fiction, illness, health-related, some-cartoons-art-illustrations, seas-and-skies, ecosystems
I do hope to get this out of the library again and write a better review, but I had to send it back and didn't have a chance to take notes.
Here are two excellent gr reviews:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Jan 30, 2013Tania rated it liked it
Shelves: non-fiction
A very interesting read. Although I know absolutely nothing of this subject matter, it was relatively easy to understand. My favourite chapter was on the human rhinovirus (common cold). Who knew that it’s actually not the virus that makes us feel sick, the immune cells released to fight the virus, makes us feel horrible. I was also fascinated by the chapter on bacteriophages. These live viruses can be injected to (very effectively) fight and kill other viruses. We may be hearing more about this in future, as more and more people become resistant to antibiotics. (less)
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Nov 14, 2011Caren rated it liked it
Shelves: adult-nonfiction
This is a slender volume that gives you quite a bit of easily accessible information about viruses. Each chapter tells the tale of a different virus in a fascinating way. Profiled are: rhinovirus (common cold), influenza virus, human papillomavirus, bacteriophages (viruses that "eat" bacteria), marine phages (viruses in the ocean), endogenous retroviruses (viruses that survive by inserting themselves into the host's DNA, some going back thousands of years), HIV, West Nile virus, SARS and Ebola, smallpox, and mimivirus. This may sound dull, but, trust me, it is not. It is studded with bits of history that make this a wonderful book for the layperson. For example, the name "influenza" is from the Italian word for "influence", and comes from the medieval belief that the stars influenced a person's health. This book is so brief, you can read it in an afternoon, and come away with some new insights. (less)
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Jul 10, 2019Megan rated it really liked it
Shelves: read-library, nonfiction
A quick, informative read that can be completed in one sitting. This books talks about several viruses: influenza, malaria, HIV, HPV, etc. the author gives us a history of the virus, how it evolved and was discovered, and how it affects the body.
One major fact I did learn: animals are responsible for MOST viruses that are deadly to humans.
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Feb 15, 2019Jesus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: non-fiction, biology, science
A "week-end read", perfect for its purpose of introducing the layperson to the sheer abundance, variety and importance of viruses.
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Apr 11, 2015Elliott Bignell rated it it was amazing
Carl Zimmer, one of the most gifted and engaging science writers of our time, has done it again. Few voices bring life to science this way, or indeed to the very rocks on which you walk. His details are always striking and intriguing. Here's an example: The human genome contains about 23,000 genes, coding sequences making up about 1.2% of our DNA. It also contains about 100,000 fragments of viral DNA, 8% of the total. Yes, you are a graveyard of undead viral DNA, endogenous retroviruses making up 7 times as much of your DNA as your genes. Most of these are altered beyond viability, but some can be brought to life under the right circumstances. One viral gene seems to have brought us sex, way back in prehistory. Other of its kind use sexual transmission to kill us off. Some other may one day spring from our cells after millennia of dormancy and resume its attacks.
Here's another gem: The oceans, once thought to be rather sterile and certainly not seething with viruses, contain something on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viral particles, mostly bacterial phage. Fans of Greg Bear will recognise this term from the novel "Blood Music", where he mentions in passing a phage production centre in the former Soviet Union, in Georgia. Zimmer informs us that this was a going concern, with front-line troops equipped with phage pills during the Second World War. Phage, you will hear if you read Zimmer's little masterpiece, are viruses that infect bacteria - plagues of plagues, one might say, and a potential treatment for bacterial disease whose time may again be upon us as pathogens mutate with frightening rapidity to defeat our best antibiotics. Phage can even reprogram bacteria to attack their own biofilms, the redoubts from within which they otherwise sit inviolate, invulnerable to antibiotics and even disinfectant.
Viruses, you will understand, are everywhere, and the pointillist portrait Zimmer paints complements his glittering confections of parasites from "Parasite Rex". Read this and you will see ghostly cities of glimmering viral DNA moving among you in the shape of people, all wading in a seething soup of quasi-independent genes. The furry and feathery animals which catch the attention are but a standing wave on the surface of a deep, darkly eddying network of viral genes, teeming and exchanging and shaping life itself. The first "organisms" may have been RNA viruses in an alkaline soup of hydrothermal autocatalysis.
Zimmer brings his usual light touch and engaging manner while altering the way one sees the world to its very foundations.
This book was written as part of the "World of Viruses" project, funded by the US National Centre for Research Resources at the NIH. More can be found on-line under "World of Viruses". (less)
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Sep 02, 2011Gary Schroeder rated it liked it
This is my first foray into the writings of Carl Zimmer. Given its extreme brevity (because it's actually a collection of essays), I know that it's not necessarily representative of his other books which, based on this one, I'm looking forward to checking out. Three stars only because it's a solid and edifying treatment of a somewhat arcane subject, not some kind of action thriller.
"A Planet of Viruses" is a whirlwind review of what viruses are, how they were first isolated as pathogens by 19th century scientists, how they've integrated with all life on earth and what hazards they pose. Why is any of this interesting? Mostly because viruses are simply _weird_. As shells of protein housing a few strands of DNA, they seem like little more than microscopic blocks of matter, unable to replicate on their own. Seems like the very definition of inert matter. And yet, by using the cells of living bodies, they "trick" those cells into doing the replication for them. Through sloppy, imperfect replication, they gain new genetic material and thus evolve. Is that "life"? Do they qualify as living organisms? See what I mean by "weird"?
This is merely an introduction to viruses and their fascinating oddities. Unlike the treatment you might expect from some popular science authors, this is not a terror-fest. Zimmer's intent is not to send you into a "Contagion"-style panic (with follow-up movie script). But after reading it, you'll understand how viruses work and have a greater appreciation for the crucial role that they have played (and continue to play) in our mutual co-evolution. (less)
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Sep 10, 2013Lynley rated it it was amazing
Shelves: science
I'll expect nightmares tonight.
'Part chicken part virus' is a phrase that'll stick in my head. Also the image of the world's oceans, which I'll know from now on as chock to the brim with viruses -- few of which want anything to do with me personally -- which is not what can be said of mosquitoes (viruses on wings), or the new crop of viruses evolving in monkeys somewhere in the African jungles as we speak. The chapter entitled 'Our Inner Parasites' should probably be avoided by the hypochondriacally inclined and those with over-active imaginations. I knew I was right to be scared of bats.
Are there anything as terrifying as viruses, really? We're all part human, part virus, and perhaps what makes them so terrifying is that humans are reliant upon viruses at the same time as we are their victims. Viruses are the perfect villain.
I get the sense from this book that humans don't really know a hell of a lot about viruses yet, still struggling to determine whether mimiviruses, for example, are 'living' or not, and why they need all those genes.
Carl Zimmer is an excellent writer of pop-science and I'll be seeking out more from him. He's also made me want to read some Michael Crichton. (less)
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Dec 31, 2018Sivasothi N. rated it liked it
it was an enjoyable read, and Zimmerman tried to steer clear of jargon, but with the text so short, many impactful stories are severely reduced. In retrospect, I think the book may be a struggle for the beginner, because there are no illustrations. That would have been very helpful in understanding some of the viral mechanisms. That’s a little surprising, given this book was commissioned by the World of Viruses project.
The second edition (2015) includes a little on MERS and chikungunya: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/bo...
You might enjoy these lovely videos about microbes and viruses I shared with my students (last updated 2016) will help: http://tinyurl.com/lsm1103-videos (less)
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Mar 11, 2020Tom Woolf rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Short, informative, and engaging. Zimmer manages to write in a way that the layman will find perfectly readable, while packing in enough information that the already well-informed reader will still learn new things. The section on coronaviruses particularly resonates at this moment.
My only complaint is that certain sections could stand an update. I'm thinking specifically of the paragraphs about HIV treatment. Zimmer does not address the current state of the art in anti-retroviral drugs or the undetectable=untransmissable paradigm. That's understandable, as the book was published in 2015, and no science text can be kept constantly updated, but it's something that stood out to me. (less)
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Mar 05, 2020Ebrahim Mirmalek rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, science
A book to read during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a fairly easy read for me, with no background in biology, I must say, after reading this book, I made peace with this destructive/constructive infectious agent called "virus". I marked many passages of this book.
At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitly deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more. (less)
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Jun 07, 2019Anisha rated it liked it
Shelves: science, medicine, biology
A nice, informative, short read! I like the short little essays, they make this easy to digest for a layperson. It has a good balance of information on biology and epidemiology, which makes most of the essays engaging. I work with some of these viruses everyday, and it was nice to get a big picture of their histories and symptoms.
The essay on WNV had many typos and grammatical errors, like it had not been edited--this one was a little difficult to read. Minus one star for this.
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Oct 26, 2014LINDA rated it it was amazing
Shelves: books
My husband looked over and saw me reading this book, and said “No!” while shaking his head. I looked up, I knew why he was having this reaction. I can be a little obsessive over germs, but I assured him that it was ok. I had made it past the worst part of the book where the author coyly points out on page 3 that a virus might even impregnate a piece of paper, spreading disease with the touch of a finger. Who wouldn’t look at the book in their hand with a small amount of horror after reading that tidbit of information? Yet, I am so loyal to the printed book and the library system not even the threat of viruses impregnated into a book page could send me running to an e-reader! With the knowledge that these inconceivably small and incredibly tough viruses are all around us, I could let go of any efforts to control the situation and I immediately felt at peace.
Have you ever played the carnival game where you have to try to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar? Using the same premise, think of a two-liter bottle full of sea water. How many viruses could be inside? I’ll give you a hint to help you out- viruses are much smaller than bacteria, a thousand viruses could be lined up along the side of one grain of salt. Now take a guess and click to reveal the answer.
(view spoiler)
We all know that viruses can play a negative role by being a nuisance (like the virus that causes the common cold) and because some viruses (Ahem, Ebola and even the flu) are deadly- each year roughly 36,000 people die of flu in the United States. This book brings to light the many positives to a world with viruses?
Below is a list of my favorite six positives of viruses:
1. Viruses move DNA between species to provide new genetic material for evolution.
2. Viruses regulate vast populations of organisms.
3. Viruses help control the planet’s temperature.
4. Viruses are instrumental in the production of some of the oxygen that we breathe. Proteins from viruses carrying out light harvesting have been found by Scientists when they examine the DNA of an abundant species of ocean bacteria Synechococcus. Free-floating viruses with photosynthesis genes searching for a new host to infect have also been found. The author relays that by one rough calculation, 10 percent of all the photosynthesis on earth is carried out with virus genes.
5. Viruses help our immune system. Scientists are optimistic that they will be capable of developing a cure for the common cold, but should they? Can the common cold can be beneficial? Evidence has been gathered showing that children exposed to relatively harmless viruses and bacteria may be gaining protection from immune disorders when they age. Human Rhinoviruses (common cold) may help to train our immune system not to overreact to minor triggers, so that out immune system can instead direct assaults at true threats. With a new understanding the cold virus can be viewed as a wise old tutor instead of a nuisance to be eradicated.
6. And last but not least, if you are reading this you can thank a virus for making your life possible. Some cells from a fetus develop into the an organ that draws in nutrients from the mother’s tissues called the placenta. A human endogenous retrovirus gene plays a crucial role in the fusion of the cells in the outer layer of the placenta. These cells use the above mentioned human endogenous retrovirus gene to produce a protein on their surface, which latches them to neighboring cells. Without the endogenous retrovirus, the placenta would not be able to form properly, and without a placenta to draw nutrients from the mother’s tissues for the fetus- reproductive abilities of mammals would be at a stand still.
This book explains that we need to move beyond the idea of ‘humans as a species’ versus virus. Because there is a continual gradual blending and shifting mix of DNA, Virologists should extensively study both the positive and negative ways viruses and other organisms interact.
The book urges us to consider the contradicting meaning of the word virus inherited from the Roman Empire, which originally signified either a life-giving substance (seamen) or a deadly substance (venom of a snake). Knowledge that viruses can be deadly abounds, but taking a deeper look brings the understanding that they have also contributed to the world and humans as a species in many positive ways. Viruses are a duality of creation and destruction to be understood and respected.
Public Service Announcement: Antibiotics are USELESS against viruses- they only work against bacteria. Please do humanity a favor by not rushing to your doctor to demand antibiotics if you suspect that you have a common cold or the flu or even Ebola which are all viruses. The unnecessary and ineffective use of antibiotics is at our own peril as humans, because the overuse increases antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Excellent book, full of interesting content that makes you think about the world differently! Bonus: Page 10 dispels that popular myth that going outside into the cold can give you a cold! (Sorry Mom, the cold comes from a virus- not cold weather!) (less)
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A Planet of Viruses
by
Carl Zimmer (Goodreads Author)
4.01 · Rating details · 2,833 ratings · 304 reviews
Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We are most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or the flu, but viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long, in fact, that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in caves miles underground.
This fascinating book explores the hidden world of viruses—a world that we all inhabit. Here Carl Zimmer, popular science writer and author of Discover magazine’s award-winning blog The Loom, presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come. In this eye-opening tour of the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life as we know it, we learn that some treatments for the common cold do more harm than good; that the world’s oceans are home to an astonishing number of viruses; and that the evolution of HIV is now in overdrive, spawning more mutated strains than we care to imagine.
The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer “as fine a science essayist as we have.” A Planet of Viruses is sure to please his many fans and further enhance his reputation as one of America’s most respected and admired science journalists. (less)
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Hardcover, 122 pages
Published September 15th 2011 by University Of Chicago Press
ISBN
0226983358 (ISBN13: 9780226983356)
Edition Language
English
URL
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo11461703.html
Feb 12, 2019Petra-X rated it liked it
Shelves: medicine-science, reviewed, 2019-100-reviews, 2019-read
My third Carl Zimmer book in a week. It isn't an outstanding 10-star as She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity or a brilliant and illuminating (and gross) Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, worth 5 stars. Instead it is a very short book about viruses and there really isn't much to say about viruses.
I did learn about phages and phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics and how the Russians have pursued this therapy, but being as antibiotics are cheaper and easier to make and sell for a lot of money, the capitalist West more or less abandoned it. As the overuse of antibiotics encourages resistant mutations in viruses, so will other treatments have to be explored.
As most people who read up on HIV/AIDS (and it was more or less impossible not to in the 90s) I knew about retroviruses with their single 'thread' of dna. I knew about vaccinations, about the eradication of smallpox, of why Ebola is self-limiting and that even viruses might have viruses too! The debate on whether viruses are alive or not still continues.
So that was that. 3 star. (less)
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Jun 11, 2014Alex rated it liked it
Shelves: science, favorite-reviews, 2017
The thing with me is that I don't get anything. Here's an example: I want to find out about viruses, so I track down the best book I can about viruses and I read it, and now if you ask me what a virus is I can say things. They hijack a cell's normal function so that it makes copies of the virus's DNA, instead of copies of their own DNA. Something like that. Amazing, I am so smart. But what if you ask me what a cell is? Or what DNA is? I can keep saying things - the cell is the factory of the human body, DNA is the blueprint for life - but I'm just saying things, dude. I'm a fucking parrot. Understanding a thing metaphorically is not the same as understanding the actual thing. I don't really, at a core level, know what I'm talking about, almost ever.
metaphor
So I know it's sortof a cliche to get all "the older I get the more I realize I don't know" or whatever it is old people say, and also it's untrue in my case because I didn't think I knew anything before either, but at a certain point you start to wonder, like, why am I even reading books. I guess it might help if I was at a party and chatting with a virologist and he wanted to say something interesting but there's a certain base level of knowledge I'd need in order to understand the more interesting thing? haha I don't go to parties and all my friends are unemployed graphic designers.
Carl Zimmer is not that virologist who has something interesting to say. I wasn't all that into this book. Look, Siddhartha Mukherjee is the gold standard for talking about medical shit in an engaging and vaguely understandable way, right? Carl Zimmer's nowhere close. On the scale between textbook and Mukherjee, Zimmer's pretty low down. I was bored.
Also he says to take zinc for a cold and I'm pretty sure that's bullshit.
not totally clear on to what extent this is a metaphor
He does, finally, at the end, talk about whether viruses count as "alive" or not, and I think that debate is super interesting. We've come up with a definition of "life," which like all definitions is sortof "decide what you think is alive and then describe that and there you are," so in other words it's bullshit, but anyway what it is is you have to be able to reproduce, and some other stuff, and viruses don't exactly reproduce, right? They make other peoples' cells do it for them. So does that count? What if viruses feel really bad about making us sick, and they keep having conferences to try to come up with ways to reproduce without making people sick, but maybe there's a contingent of like alt-right viruses who don't believe in sickness. This is the interesting part - saying we don't know shit about colds is not the interesting part - and there isn't enough of it. I also wanted to talk about rabies, because rabies is bananas, and he didn't. My thing with rabies is, it gets into your saliva, that makes sense, but then it makes you want to bite everyone so your saliva gets into them? That's so awesome! How does it do that? How did evolution come up with that? I don't know! I don't understand any of this! (less)
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Nov 16, 2012Daniel Bastian rated it it was amazing
Shelves: reviewed
“Viruses are biology’s living matrix.”
We share little in common with our forebears’ understanding of the universe. In ancient times the earth was ensconced by a dome or firmament which held back rain and other effusions from above. Drought and wetness were tangible indicators of the pantheon’s impression of earthly behavior, with a blue sky betokening the rain that lay just beyond the earth’s protective shell. For many of our ancestors, the stars influenced the health of those on earth; for others, calamity and human hardship could be ascribed to nothing more than the shifting dispositions of the local deities. Maladies of the skin and throat and other physiological dysfunction were regarded as plagues, or instances of pestilential terror cast down as punishment. It was not until our discovery of the virus that these superordinary affiliations were shorn in favor of the vanishingly tiny world thriving right under our noses.
Viruses have been invading other life forms for billions of years with nary an invitation, yet our knowledge of this relatively young science is still fairly limited. Helming this microcosmic thrill ride in A Planet of Viruses is Carl Zimmer, first-place recipient of the 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism competition and one of the most illustrious science reporters of our time. Author of Microcosm and Parasite Rex, pathogen science has long been his forte. In his latest and most abbreviated work, Zimmer marshals his treasure of insights and provides us a sweeping introduction to this fascinating, if ineluctably unnerving world.
The book is organized as a compilation of well-connected short essays, a format that suits the material well. Each of the chapters spotlights a specific strain or type of virus which has wreaked considerable chaos on human welfare–from rhinovirus, smallpox, and influenza to HIV and West Nile virus–and Zimmer’s characteristic story-centric style makes each vignette as rousing as the last. As you progress, Zimmer slowly raises the curtain on virus ingenuity, weaving accessible tales and the latest research and statistics throughout.
The Infiltrator
Since viruses first breached the scientific periphery in the 19th century, over 5,000 separate strains have been identified, with possibly tens of thousands more harboring in the oceans and lining the guts of every species on earth. While they can vary broadly in physical size, shape, number of genes, and mobility within and between hosts, they all borrow from the same playbook. At the first, a virus requires a host to survive, unlike bacteria, so its blinkered priority is to gain access to the cellular machinery of other life forms. Whether it’s animals and plants or bacteria and archaea, a virus does not discriminate.
I like to think of them as the world's smallest stealth agent, as resourceful as they are deadly. In what makes Ethan Hunt look like an amateur, a virus has the ability to infiltrate a host's cells in a variety of ways, a skill which amplifies as evolution takes its course. Once the virus descends upon the host's genetic structure, it can really begin its work. With full access to the genetic database the virus begins installing its own DNA onto the cells of its host, overriding the host's DNA. At this point, the virus is replicated by the host's hijacked DNA at a prodigious rate until many thousands of identical copies line the inside of the host's cells. Depending on the genetic mixture, this assimilation can disrupt a host gene's ability to make proteins, unleashing havoc on the unwitting custodian, or the virus presence can trigger the release of antibodies which scramble to shut down the intruders, subjecting the host to nasty symptoms in the process.
There is ongoing debate over whether viruses qualify as a form of life. They cannot survive outside of a host cell and are absent any kind of cellular architecture, rendering them little more than small, self-assembling clusters of nucleic acids. Even so, Zimmer is quick to point out their indispensable role in shaping and sustaining life over the aeons. “We humans are an inextricable blend of mammal and virus. Remove our virus-derived genes, and we would be unable to reproduce.” (p. 93)
Viruses have also been implicated in the origin of life, as their capacity for self-replication may hold the keys to how precellular material jumpstarted the chain of life on earth. The uninvited stowaways have been shuffling genes among different host species ever since, comprising as much as 8% of the human genome. Thus not only have viruses been a tremendous force in the evolution of life on this planet, they are essential to our survival.
Zimmer also discloses plainly just how near are viruses and other infectious agents. Each of our trillions of cells can contain hundreds of viruses and bacteria. Human papillomavirus (HPV), most known for inflicting cervical cancer and killing over 270,000 women every year, is actually quite common and can be found nestled in your skin cells. We constantly shed our outermost layer of skin after cell death, depositing the virus-laden DNA all around us. That means that right now you likely have more than a few HPV viruses on the desk and laptop in front of you. Not the cheeriest thought perhaps, but you will find solace in the fact that the majority of HPV strains are benign and pose no immediate risk.
Cat, Meet Mouse
It is true that the lion's share of known viruses introduce no changes to infected cells or simply lie dormant within our DNA. But it is also true that pathogens evolve more quickly than any known form of life. For this reason microbe trajectories always lie one step ahead of us and are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Zimmer relates this chilling reality by describing why scientists are urging against the over-use of antibiotics. Not only do antibacterials have a null effect on viruses, they upset the delicate ecosystem inside our bodies and "incentivize" bacteria to evolve countermeasures, potentially resulting in more noxious versions of both benign and harmful strains.
In response to this dilemma, medical biologists now have their eyes on an alternative approach to fighting bacteria: phage therapy, an area in which precious little research has been conducted. Somewhat confusingly, a bacteriophage is a virus used to combat resilient bacteria. Essentially, pitting pathogen against pathogen. Zimmer tells of a lab-engineered phage (pictured below) developed by a team from Boston University and MIT that can wipe out 99.997% of E. coli strains. More impressively, “scientists at the Eliava Institute have developed a dressing for wounds that is impregnated with half a dozen different phages, capable of killing the six most common kinds of bacteria that infect skin wounds.” (p. 38) Among many microbiologists, this approach to resistant bacteria is a heavily favored alternative to antibiotics. But until a wider body of research is explored, such precision warfare is confined to the lab.
Exit: Stage Left
By all accounts, the most uplifting installment is that of smallpox, which Zimmer recounts in a coda entitled "The Long Goodbye." When this dark scourge first started replicating inside of human hosts remains an open question. Telltale signs can be seen in the 3,000 year old mummified corpse of Pharaoh Ramses V, while other scientists date its emergence as early as 10,000 BC. Based on extant medical records and fatality rates, it’s been estimated that smallpox caused 400,000 European deaths each year during the 18th century and another 300-500 million deaths in the 20th century alone, bringing down three empires in the process. Its final death toll across human history and its legacy in shaping civilization may never be fully realized, but it met a worthy competitor in one Edward Jenner.
Among the venerated elite in science history, Jenner used cowpox, a member of the same viral family as smallpox, to inoculate potential smallpox victims. It worked, and while Jenner did not discover the antigenic properties activated by vaccination, it was his “trial by fire” testing and scrupulous documentation of his findings that led to its widespread adoption against smallpox. In 1979, the World Health Organization declared smallpox an eradicated disease. The unflinching bravura of those who risked their lives in the global eradication effort functions as a testament to human possibility. WHO’s vaccination campaigns, which achieved success largely by isolating the infected from the non-infected and administering vaccines to quarantined communities, is perhaps the greatest success story in all of medicine and lends hope for the outcome of future travails.
Closing Thoughts
Thanks to one of the finest science communicators today, the remaining essays assembled in A Planet of Viruses are every bit as informative and accessible. As stepladder to the scientific community, Zimmer has a knack for engaging readers of all stripes, from the lay reader to the armchair scientist to anyone who simply likes reading good stories. His way is precise, not overly simplified, choosing just the right level of linguistic precision to divulge this teeming underworld to his readers. While certainly not as detailed as some of his earlier expositions, this brilliant anthology serves as a perfect preamble to the bustling field of microlife. Clocking in at just under 100 pages, I highly recommend you target this one for your next free weekend, preferably before, and not after, having eaten.
Note: This review is republished from my official website. Click through for additional footnotes and imagery. (less)
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Jan 26, 2016Lilo rated it really liked it
Recommends it for: everyone who is looking for a short-read about viruses
Shelves: health, biology, medicine, science
This is a very interesting book, and I am glad I read it. My only beef with this book is that it is too short. After reading Carl Zimmer's outstanding book "Parasite Rex", I had expected more.
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Feb 22, 2012Matt rated it really liked it
I liked reading this book, and I think so did many retroviruses I carry.
I've read a lot of Zimmer's blogs and magazine articles, and I've even seen him at a symposium, but this is the first of his books I've tackled. I like his work because he takes on difficult subjects and explains them to the masses in a very approachable format. I actually didn't expect this to be quite as short and easy a read as it was, but this was practically airplane reading many short vignettes enabling easy stopping ...more
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Jun 20, 2013Elizabeth Theiss rated it liked it
Shelves: epdemiology, science
Don't be deterred by the pedestrian science in the first few chapters of Planet of Viruses. It gets better. And by better, I mean more interesting and mysterious.
Viruses are fragments of genetic code encased in protein with the capacity to invade cells and commandeer cell resources to reproduce the virus, ultimately bursting the cell wall to release replicated viruses. Certain viruses have been harnessed by animals and humans to play critical roles in the life of the organism. For example, human placentas are formed in part by the activity of specialized viruses. Viruses can perform photosynthesis and are estimated to account for about a quarter of earth's photosynthetic activity.
I almost abandoned this book at the end of the second chapter because it failed to provide anything beyond the usual descriptions of famous viruses ( influenza, HIV, etc.). So glad I kept reading. I will reread this one again with pleasure. (less)
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Jan 22, 2016Dov Zeller rated it really liked it
Shelves: sciency-naturish, non-fiction, illness, health-related, some-cartoons-art-illustrations, seas-and-skies, ecosystems
I do hope to get this out of the library again and write a better review, but I had to send it back and didn't have a chance to take notes.
Here are two excellent gr reviews:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Jan 30, 2013Tania rated it liked it
Shelves: non-fiction
A very interesting read. Although I know absolutely nothing of this subject matter, it was relatively easy to understand. My favourite chapter was on the human rhinovirus (common cold). Who knew that it’s actually not the virus that makes us feel sick, the immune cells released to fight the virus, makes us feel horrible. I was also fascinated by the chapter on bacteriophages. These live viruses can be injected to (very effectively) fight and kill other viruses. We may be hearing more about this in future, as more and more people become resistant to antibiotics. (less)
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Nov 14, 2011Caren rated it liked it
Shelves: adult-nonfiction
This is a slender volume that gives you quite a bit of easily accessible information about viruses. Each chapter tells the tale of a different virus in a fascinating way. Profiled are: rhinovirus (common cold), influenza virus, human papillomavirus, bacteriophages (viruses that "eat" bacteria), marine phages (viruses in the ocean), endogenous retroviruses (viruses that survive by inserting themselves into the host's DNA, some going back thousands of years), HIV, West Nile virus, SARS and Ebola, smallpox, and mimivirus. This may sound dull, but, trust me, it is not. It is studded with bits of history that make this a wonderful book for the layperson. For example, the name "influenza" is from the Italian word for "influence", and comes from the medieval belief that the stars influenced a person's health. This book is so brief, you can read it in an afternoon, and come away with some new insights. (less)
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Jul 10, 2019Megan rated it really liked it
Shelves: read-library, nonfiction
A quick, informative read that can be completed in one sitting. This books talks about several viruses: influenza, malaria, HIV, HPV, etc. the author gives us a history of the virus, how it evolved and was discovered, and how it affects the body.
One major fact I did learn: animals are responsible for MOST viruses that are deadly to humans.
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Feb 15, 2019Jesus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: non-fiction, biology, science
A "week-end read", perfect for its purpose of introducing the layperson to the sheer abundance, variety and importance of viruses.
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Apr 11, 2015Elliott Bignell rated it it was amazing
Carl Zimmer, one of the most gifted and engaging science writers of our time, has done it again. Few voices bring life to science this way, or indeed to the very rocks on which you walk. His details are always striking and intriguing. Here's an example: The human genome contains about 23,000 genes, coding sequences making up about 1.2% of our DNA. It also contains about 100,000 fragments of viral DNA, 8% of the total. Yes, you are a graveyard of undead viral DNA, endogenous retroviruses making up 7 times as much of your DNA as your genes. Most of these are altered beyond viability, but some can be brought to life under the right circumstances. One viral gene seems to have brought us sex, way back in prehistory. Other of its kind use sexual transmission to kill us off. Some other may one day spring from our cells after millennia of dormancy and resume its attacks.
Here's another gem: The oceans, once thought to be rather sterile and certainly not seething with viruses, contain something on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viral particles, mostly bacterial phage. Fans of Greg Bear will recognise this term from the novel "Blood Music", where he mentions in passing a phage production centre in the former Soviet Union, in Georgia. Zimmer informs us that this was a going concern, with front-line troops equipped with phage pills during the Second World War. Phage, you will hear if you read Zimmer's little masterpiece, are viruses that infect bacteria - plagues of plagues, one might say, and a potential treatment for bacterial disease whose time may again be upon us as pathogens mutate with frightening rapidity to defeat our best antibiotics. Phage can even reprogram bacteria to attack their own biofilms, the redoubts from within which they otherwise sit inviolate, invulnerable to antibiotics and even disinfectant.
Viruses, you will understand, are everywhere, and the pointillist portrait Zimmer paints complements his glittering confections of parasites from "Parasite Rex". Read this and you will see ghostly cities of glimmering viral DNA moving among you in the shape of people, all wading in a seething soup of quasi-independent genes. The furry and feathery animals which catch the attention are but a standing wave on the surface of a deep, darkly eddying network of viral genes, teeming and exchanging and shaping life itself. The first "organisms" may have been RNA viruses in an alkaline soup of hydrothermal autocatalysis.
Zimmer brings his usual light touch and engaging manner while altering the way one sees the world to its very foundations.
This book was written as part of the "World of Viruses" project, funded by the US National Centre for Research Resources at the NIH. More can be found on-line under "World of Viruses". (less)
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Sep 02, 2011Gary Schroeder rated it liked it
This is my first foray into the writings of Carl Zimmer. Given its extreme brevity (because it's actually a collection of essays), I know that it's not necessarily representative of his other books which, based on this one, I'm looking forward to checking out. Three stars only because it's a solid and edifying treatment of a somewhat arcane subject, not some kind of action thriller.
"A Planet of Viruses" is a whirlwind review of what viruses are, how they were first isolated as pathogens by 19th century scientists, how they've integrated with all life on earth and what hazards they pose. Why is any of this interesting? Mostly because viruses are simply _weird_. As shells of protein housing a few strands of DNA, they seem like little more than microscopic blocks of matter, unable to replicate on their own. Seems like the very definition of inert matter. And yet, by using the cells of living bodies, they "trick" those cells into doing the replication for them. Through sloppy, imperfect replication, they gain new genetic material and thus evolve. Is that "life"? Do they qualify as living organisms? See what I mean by "weird"?
This is merely an introduction to viruses and their fascinating oddities. Unlike the treatment you might expect from some popular science authors, this is not a terror-fest. Zimmer's intent is not to send you into a "Contagion"-style panic (with follow-up movie script). But after reading it, you'll understand how viruses work and have a greater appreciation for the crucial role that they have played (and continue to play) in our mutual co-evolution. (less)
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Sep 10, 2013Lynley rated it it was amazing
Shelves: science
I'll expect nightmares tonight.
'Part chicken part virus' is a phrase that'll stick in my head. Also the image of the world's oceans, which I'll know from now on as chock to the brim with viruses -- few of which want anything to do with me personally -- which is not what can be said of mosquitoes (viruses on wings), or the new crop of viruses evolving in monkeys somewhere in the African jungles as we speak. The chapter entitled 'Our Inner Parasites' should probably be avoided by the hypochondriacally inclined and those with over-active imaginations. I knew I was right to be scared of bats.
Are there anything as terrifying as viruses, really? We're all part human, part virus, and perhaps what makes them so terrifying is that humans are reliant upon viruses at the same time as we are their victims. Viruses are the perfect villain.
I get the sense from this book that humans don't really know a hell of a lot about viruses yet, still struggling to determine whether mimiviruses, for example, are 'living' or not, and why they need all those genes.
Carl Zimmer is an excellent writer of pop-science and I'll be seeking out more from him. He's also made me want to read some Michael Crichton. (less)
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Dec 31, 2018Sivasothi N. rated it liked it
it was an enjoyable read, and Zimmerman tried to steer clear of jargon, but with the text so short, many impactful stories are severely reduced. In retrospect, I think the book may be a struggle for the beginner, because there are no illustrations. That would have been very helpful in understanding some of the viral mechanisms. That’s a little surprising, given this book was commissioned by the World of Viruses project.
The second edition (2015) includes a little on MERS and chikungunya: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/bo...
You might enjoy these lovely videos about microbes and viruses I shared with my students (last updated 2016) will help: http://tinyurl.com/lsm1103-videos (less)
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Mar 11, 2020Tom Woolf rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Short, informative, and engaging. Zimmer manages to write in a way that the layman will find perfectly readable, while packing in enough information that the already well-informed reader will still learn new things. The section on coronaviruses particularly resonates at this moment.
My only complaint is that certain sections could stand an update. I'm thinking specifically of the paragraphs about HIV treatment. Zimmer does not address the current state of the art in anti-retroviral drugs or the undetectable=untransmissable paradigm. That's understandable, as the book was published in 2015, and no science text can be kept constantly updated, but it's something that stood out to me. (less)
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Mar 05, 2020Ebrahim Mirmalek rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, science
A book to read during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a fairly easy read for me, with no background in biology, I must say, after reading this book, I made peace with this destructive/constructive infectious agent called "virus". I marked many passages of this book.
At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitly deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more. (less)
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Jun 07, 2019Anisha rated it liked it
Shelves: science, medicine, biology
A nice, informative, short read! I like the short little essays, they make this easy to digest for a layperson. It has a good balance of information on biology and epidemiology, which makes most of the essays engaging. I work with some of these viruses everyday, and it was nice to get a big picture of their histories and symptoms.
The essay on WNV had many typos and grammatical errors, like it had not been edited--this one was a little difficult to read. Minus one star for this.
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Oct 26, 2014LINDA rated it it was amazing
Shelves: books
My husband looked over and saw me reading this book, and said “No!” while shaking his head. I looked up, I knew why he was having this reaction. I can be a little obsessive over germs, but I assured him that it was ok. I had made it past the worst part of the book where the author coyly points out on page 3 that a virus might even impregnate a piece of paper, spreading disease with the touch of a finger. Who wouldn’t look at the book in their hand with a small amount of horror after reading that tidbit of information? Yet, I am so loyal to the printed book and the library system not even the threat of viruses impregnated into a book page could send me running to an e-reader! With the knowledge that these inconceivably small and incredibly tough viruses are all around us, I could let go of any efforts to control the situation and I immediately felt at peace.
Have you ever played the carnival game where you have to try to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar? Using the same premise, think of a two-liter bottle full of sea water. How many viruses could be inside? I’ll give you a hint to help you out- viruses are much smaller than bacteria, a thousand viruses could be lined up along the side of one grain of salt. Now take a guess and click to reveal the answer.
(view spoiler)
We all know that viruses can play a negative role by being a nuisance (like the virus that causes the common cold) and because some viruses (Ahem, Ebola and even the flu) are deadly- each year roughly 36,000 people die of flu in the United States. This book brings to light the many positives to a world with viruses?
Below is a list of my favorite six positives of viruses:
1. Viruses move DNA between species to provide new genetic material for evolution.
2. Viruses regulate vast populations of organisms.
3. Viruses help control the planet’s temperature.
4. Viruses are instrumental in the production of some of the oxygen that we breathe. Proteins from viruses carrying out light harvesting have been found by Scientists when they examine the DNA of an abundant species of ocean bacteria Synechococcus. Free-floating viruses with photosynthesis genes searching for a new host to infect have also been found. The author relays that by one rough calculation, 10 percent of all the photosynthesis on earth is carried out with virus genes.
5. Viruses help our immune system. Scientists are optimistic that they will be capable of developing a cure for the common cold, but should they? Can the common cold can be beneficial? Evidence has been gathered showing that children exposed to relatively harmless viruses and bacteria may be gaining protection from immune disorders when they age. Human Rhinoviruses (common cold) may help to train our immune system not to overreact to minor triggers, so that out immune system can instead direct assaults at true threats. With a new understanding the cold virus can be viewed as a wise old tutor instead of a nuisance to be eradicated.
6. And last but not least, if you are reading this you can thank a virus for making your life possible. Some cells from a fetus develop into the an organ that draws in nutrients from the mother’s tissues called the placenta. A human endogenous retrovirus gene plays a crucial role in the fusion of the cells in the outer layer of the placenta. These cells use the above mentioned human endogenous retrovirus gene to produce a protein on their surface, which latches them to neighboring cells. Without the endogenous retrovirus, the placenta would not be able to form properly, and without a placenta to draw nutrients from the mother’s tissues for the fetus- reproductive abilities of mammals would be at a stand still.
This book explains that we need to move beyond the idea of ‘humans as a species’ versus virus. Because there is a continual gradual blending and shifting mix of DNA, Virologists should extensively study both the positive and negative ways viruses and other organisms interact.
The book urges us to consider the contradicting meaning of the word virus inherited from the Roman Empire, which originally signified either a life-giving substance (seamen) or a deadly substance (venom of a snake). Knowledge that viruses can be deadly abounds, but taking a deeper look brings the understanding that they have also contributed to the world and humans as a species in many positive ways. Viruses are a duality of creation and destruction to be understood and respected.
Public Service Announcement: Antibiotics are USELESS against viruses- they only work against bacteria. Please do humanity a favor by not rushing to your doctor to demand antibiotics if you suspect that you have a common cold or the flu or even Ebola which are all viruses. The unnecessary and ineffective use of antibiotics is at our own peril as humans, because the overuse increases antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Excellent book, full of interesting content that makes you think about the world differently! Bonus: Page 10 dispels that popular myth that going outside into the cold can give you a cold! (Sorry Mom, the cold comes from a virus- not cold weather!) (less)
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