An important, urgent, brilliantly-told look at the pandemics of our world today - now reissued with a new preface by the author `A sober, scary book that not only limms the dangers posed by emerging diseases but also raises serious questions about two centuries worth of Enlightenment beliefs in science and technology and progress' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times`A brilliant job of putting scientific work into layman's language, and the scariness of medical melodramas is offset by the excitement of scientific detection' The New Yorker`Gripping stuff... [some ] could easily have come from the pages of a novel by Joseph Conrad' James LeFanu, Financial TimesUnpurified drinking water, improper use of antibiotics, globalisation, wild food harvesting, migration... changing social and environmental conditions around the world have radically altered our understanding and battle with microbiology. The result is mutated old diseases and virus pandemics. This is the shocking story of infectious diseases and what must be done to stop them.