The Human Disease
eBook - ePub

The Human Disease

How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Human Disease

How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs

About this book

The COVID-19 pandemic won't be our last—because what makes us vulnerable to pandemics also makes us human. That is the uncomfortable but all-too-timely message of The Human Disease, which travels through history and around the globe to examine how and why pandemics are an inescapable threat of our own making. Drawing on dozens of disciplines—from medicine, epidemiology, and microbiology to anthropology, sociology, ecology, and neuroscience—as well as a unique expertise in public education about pandemic risks, biological anthropologist Sabrina Sholts identifies the human traits and tendencies that double as pandemic liabilities, from the anatomy that defines us to the misperceptions that divide us.

Weaving together a wealth of personal experiences, scientific findings, and historical stories, Sholts brings dramatic and much-needed clarity to one of the most profound challenges we face as a species. Though the COVID-19 pandemic looms large in Sholts's account, it is, in fact, just one of the many infectious disease events explored in The Human Disease. With its expansive, evolutionary perspective, the book explains how humanity will continue to face new pandemics because humans cause them, by the ways that we are and the things that we do. By recognizing our risks, Sholts suggests, we can take actions to reduce them. When the next pandemic happens, and how bad it becomes, are largely within our highly capable human hands—and will be determined by what we do with our extraordinary human brains.

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Yes, you can access The Human Disease by Sabrina Sholts in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & Epidemiology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
The MIT Press
Year
2024
eBook ISBN
9780262377935
Edition
0
Subtopic
Epidemiology

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Foreword
  4. Prologue: An Empty Museum
  5. 1ā€ƒHomo sapiens: The Evolutionary Upstart
  6. 2ā€ƒThe Human Body: A Perfect Host
  7. 3ā€ƒPermanent Residents: Setting the Stage
  8. 4ā€ƒCultural Transmission: Sharing Is Caring
  9. 5ā€ƒPeople Power: Domination and Disease
  10. 6ā€ƒForeign Foes
  11. 7ā€ƒDiseased Deviants
  12. 8ā€ƒDistrusted Authorities
  13. 9ā€ƒLoss of Liberties
  14. 10ā€ƒMass Misinformation
  15. Conclusion: Being Human
  16. Epilogue: A Museum Changed
  17. Acknowledgments
  18. Readers’ Guide
  19. Notes
  20. Index