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Veterinarian and epidemiologist Dr. Waltner-Toews leads a fascinating life. As professor of population medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ontario, he is also founder of Canada’s Veterinarians Without Borders (www.vwb-vsf.ca). After travelling the world to investigate zoonoses–diseases that spread from animals to humans–he now shares a most timely and fascinating collection of findings with readers.

Waltner-Toews’s approach differs from the sensationalism with which the topic is addressed in the popular media. Despite his book’s ominous title, its purpose is to dispel panic and educate us into action. Animals now spread more than 75 percent of emerging human diseases. Viruses such as bird flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), mad cow disease, and Ebola are most frightening when we don’t fully understand them.

In The Chickens Fight Back, Waltner-Toews explains the different methods of interspecies disease transmission. We are offered details of how rodent, avian, and insect carriers infect us and discover that our companion animals are also carriers. Cats and dogs may in fact be “nature’s Trojan horses” as they consistently bring bacteria, parasites, and viruses into our homes.

How at risk are North Americans for diseases such as avian flu, sleeping sickness, West Nile Virus, Lassa fever, hantavirus, rabies, and malaria? Why are such diseases more prevalent today?

Waltner-Toews explains that, as our population increases, so does the global human footprint that forces animal interactions into ever-diminishing habitats. This more confined interaction both within and between the species needs to be acknowledged and understood by a multicultural and multidisciplinary team approach, says Waltner-Toews. He gives practical solutions from the simple to the more integrated, pointing the finger back at us, not at the animals. Correct hand-washing techniques are as critical as the planning decisions that must be made among sociologists, anthropologists, economists, scientists, and politicians.

“Our ability to adapt is being undermined by the way in which we continually change the environment to which we are trying to adapt,” cautions the author. It is time to look at the domesticated chicken not merely as a dinner ingredient or as a carrier of microbial populations but as part of an ecosystem that includes us, too. This is important food for thought.

Hélène Meurer is a writer and book reviewer who favours books that inspire healthy actions.

Source: alive #301, November 2007

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