I never get sick (said Jenny, knocking wood), so I very rarely take antibiotics. I think I took two a few years ago, for what cause I cannot now remember. Oh, no, that’s a lie. I was prescribed some by my doctor in case I got sick while I was in India, but I didn’t get sick while I was in India so I didn’t take any.

YESSSSSSS to the Priscilla Wald book in particular, that sounds amazing. I too cannot resist with the cultural/social history angles!

No, no, the footnotes in this one are okay! These ones are fine. They’re so fine that it made me wonder if her last book was just an issue of hasty editing, rather than actually sloppy sourcing. (Eh, but maybe not.)

One thing that was so interesting while reading this book was the specific combinations of events that conspire to create diseases that can jump from animals into humans. Shah was saying that although birds do not typically give diseases straight to humans, if there are birds and pigs and people all living in close proximity, the diseases will often jump from the birds to the pigs to the humans. We are just more susceptible to pig diseases. Weird, right?

*googles Spillover* oh yeah, that looks really good too. I have been meaning to read David Quammen for a while, actually!

Yeah, I hear that. If you dwell on it, it’s too scary. Knowing that the meat industry is contributing disproportionately to the development of antibiotic-resistant bugs is making me seriously consider becoming a vegetarian, or at least sourcing my meat more responsibly.

I read that and reeeeally liked it! Like you say, it hit on a lot of elements in creating the outbreak that would never have occurred to me.

I know, aren’t they cute? They have a cancer cell that you can turn inside out and it becomes a nice healthy cell, which I think is so awesome. I got one for my aunt while she was having chemo! (& she recovered. I’m not saying it’s because of the plushy cancer cell, but maybe.)