The Life Scientific: Virus Hunters

BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific has featured some of the world's most renowned experts on deadly viruses, including Jeremy Farrar, Peter Piot, Jonathan Ball, Wendy Barclay, Kate Jones, and Kate Jones. The interviews remind us of the deadly viruses that have threatened global health and why the arrival of Covid-19 was no surprise.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 06 January 2022
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co

BBC Radio 4's celebrated program, "The Life Scientific," has featured some of the world's most renowned experts in the field of deadly viruses. The interviews make sobering reading, a reminder of all the deadly viruses that have threatened global health, and why for the scientists working on the front line in the war against viruses, the arrival of COVID-19 came as no surprise.

Among the contributors to this all-too-timely book are:

Jeremy Farrar, before he became Director of the Wellcome Trust, worked in an Infectious Diseases Hospital in Vietnam. He was on the frontline tackling SARS and nine months later a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu, H5N1.

Peter Piot was at the forefront of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. He was the first to identify HIV in Africa. It took him fifteen years to persuade the world that it was also a heterosexual disease. Later, as Executive Director of UN AIDS, he fought for years to get the UN to take the threat of HIV seriously.

Jonathan Ball studies how viruses operate at the molecular level, hoping to find their Achilles' heel and so develop effective vaccines. During the West Africa Ebola epidemic, he studied how the genome of the Ebola virus evolved as it spread from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone. He has shown that as this virus, which more happily lives in bats, infects more humans, it becomes ever more infectious.

Wendy Barclay seeks to understand how viruses are able to jump from animals to humans and why some viruses are so much more dangerous to humans than others. Most Londoners had no idea they were infected during the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. The Bird Flu epidemic in Asia claimed thousands of lives.

Kate Jones is a bat specialist who works on how ecological changes and human behavior accelerate the spread of diseases.

These experts have contributed their knowledge and experiences to this important book, providing a comprehensive understanding of the threat posed by deadly viruses and the ongoing efforts to combat them. The interviews are a testament to the dedication and resilience of the scientists who work tirelessly to protect us from these threats.

Weight: 146g
Dimension: 128 x 197 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474608084