with the material. .. >> host: thank you for joining us, we are talking about your book, "the distance between us."

can you talk a little bit about it? >> guest: it was the other side of the mountain. during the time my parents were working in the united states, i would look at the mountain something about my parents being on the other side. >> host: where did you grow up originally? >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: the little town in mexico that no one has heard of. but when they mention it, if you mention acapulco, people know where it is. it's about three hours away from their my father came here in 1977 and december my mother a few years later. my mother came here in 1980 when i was 4.5 years old.

>> host: when did you come to the united states. >> guest: i came in 1985, in the month of may of 1985, i was nine and a half years old. >> host: what can you tell us about coming to the united states? >> guest: i have been separated from my father for about eight years. when he was sent to mexico in 1985, my family convinced him to come back here. to take us to the united states, we beg him to bring us here. we didn't want to spend any more time separated from him. i was nine under happen he thought it wouldn't be able to make across the border. because we had to run across illegally. so i picked him to bring me here. we took a bus from mexico city to tijuana. >> guest: right on the border? >> guest: that's right, i have

rarely been in any kind of transportation or cars or trucks. when we got across the border, my father hired a smuggler to bring us across that border. i remember how much walking there was. i remember having a lot of guilt. i was too little to be making that kind of crossing. and i would get tired and complain about the walking and the fact that i was thirsty or hungry or tired. my father ended up carrying the a lot of times on his back. we got caught the first few times by border patrol. i just felt so much guilt because of i thought it was due to me that we had gotten caught. >> host: what happens when you get caught, reyna grande? >> guest: we got loaded up into a van when we got caught.

but everyone also got caught. then we are taken to the border control officers. i don't remember a lot. because we were children, we were not talked to by the border patrol. they would take my father into an office to talk to him. and i remember waiting for him in the hallway. the border patrol people were very nice to us. they even offered to get us a soda. we were drinking our soda and waiting for our dad. so was this mixed feeling where we were being treated very kindly by the border patrol, but at the same time, knowing that they were keeping us from crossing and from being able to have a chance at having our father back in our lives. >> host: what happened the third time. >> guest: the. >> guest: the third time we cross the border was very scary.

my father decided to try it in the dead of night, hoping that the guardsmen would protect us and help us across. and he was right. we couldn't see where we were going a lot of times and we were tripping on rocks. what i remember was a helicopter. there was a helicopter that came by with the searchlight and we were just running for our lives, trying to find a place to hide. we crawled under the bushes. and i remember the beam of the light fell on my shoe. and i was praying so hard that the people of their and the helicopter did not see me. luckily they did not. so we made it across. >> host: where did you spend your first night? test back by the time we made it across the border, the

smuggler picked us up and he made us lie down in the backseat. he said we could still get up and out by border patrol. so i spent the car ride lying down. it wasn't until we got to santa ana when he said, okay, you can get out now. so seeing all those things outside the window, it was so amazing. i remember the palm trees. in my town we didn't have palm trees. i remember the buildings that seems to reach the sky and it was amazing. >> host: where did you live in los angeles when you got here? >> guest: when i first got to l.a., i lived in highland park, which is in northeastern los angeles. it was predominantly a latino community. >> host: was a mostly illegal?

>> guest: it was a combination. there were a lot of immigrant families, but there were also legal and illegal families. >> host: out of the legal families do with the illegals? >> guest: i'm not too sure about that. as a child, i don't think i was too aware of that kind of response from the adults. but what i do remember the most is being shocked when i got to school that most of the kids in my classroom were dark skinned and they look just like me and they had last names like garcia and fernandez and they could speak the language that i couldn't speak. that was really shocking to me. they look exactly like me. yet they were not. i would say that that was probably the first time that i was really aware of the fact

that they were latino, but they were different from me. >> host: you were in esl, english as a second language, classes? >> guest: yes. >> host: was that a second class citizen type of thing? >> guest: yes, definitely. that is the way that people treat you, like an outsider. the kids speak english, to hang out in their own circles, and that the esl kids would oftentimes just hang out near the esl classroom. i do remember wanting to fit in. but not being able to because i was in esl student. i worked very hard at trying to finish my esl classes and get out of that program.

by the time was in eighth grade, i was enrolled in regular eighth-grade english. >> host: reyna grande, there is a picture we are going to show you with a saxophone. please tell us about that. >> guest: yes, the saxophone was something that i discovered when i was at urban junior high school in seventh grade. my counselor and roll me in band. it was an elective class. i was so lucky to have been put in that class. because when i walked in there and the teacher said, what instrument do you want to play, i thought at first that i had to pay for the classes, and i asked how much it cost. he said it doesn't cost you anything, it does seem like the whole world opened up to me. i got to choose whatever instrument i wanted and i chose the saxophone and that's the one

i wanted. >> host: do you still play today? >> guest: i don't play anymore. i haven't since i went off to college. when i went to uc santa cruz, they didn't have marching bands, so i didn't have anything. then i discovered a bunch of other things. i got into dance and film and video and all these other things that i was doing. and i really missed the saxophone and i wanted to get back into playing. one of my teachers pulled me aside one day. she said, it's very good if you are creative you love to explore and learn new things. but you need to choose one thing that you want to focus on, because otherwise you will be a jack of all trades. and i went home that day and i thought about it. i thought, what is it that i cannot live without?

and that's when i decided that writing was the one thing i could not live without. and i gave up everything else and i just focus on my writing. >> host: you are an award-winning novelist. your first book, "across a hundred mountains", one such a great award. and this book, "the distance between us", is an extremely personal memoir. >> guest: that's right, that's the only way i know how to write books. even though it's fiction, it is also inspired by personal experiences. with a memoir, there were many times when i was afraid to go there. it was extremely personal. and i wasn't just writing about myself. i was writing about my family and my parents and there were many times when i felt that i

was writing things that i shouldn't. but then i felt that if i was going to write a memoir, i needed to be completely honest with the story. to turn my cane and my fear into my strengths instead of them being my weaknesses. >> host: did you write this book originally in english or spanish? >> guest: i always write in english first. unfortunately when i came to this country, i became so obsessed with english that i neglected my native tongue. and for many years all i did was eat and breathe english. to the point that when i got to college, i was a writing tutor and i was tutoring native english speakers and teaching them how to write better english. but when i was in college, i got exposed to spanish speakers again, and that is when i took

those classes and i said i am going to brick -- reclaim my native tongue. it's so natural to me that i don't have to think about the language with a vocabulary and writing. but the first book, i had to think of the language in the dictionary every minute. and that really pulls me out of the story because i have to think about the vocabulary. so i write everything in english and then i do my own translation. so i translated "across a hundred mountains" myself and then "the distance between us" is going to be published in spanish next year. i did that translation also. >> host: your novel so well in the spanish-language? >> guest: they do not sell as well as they do in english. i think that is because most books published here in spanish

-- the spanish books don't have the same kind of translation of english books. i think part of that is because, you know, people can -- the readers in spanish books can't afford to buy a book and they don't have access to the books. you know? especially in low income communities. so there are no bookstores anywhere, and i think it is hard for them to really get access to the book. >> host: we are talking with reyna grande, whose memoir is called "the distance between us", published by simon & schuster. reyna grande, tell us your life story. >> guest: the character story? >> host: when you went to school and the chapter they did on new?

>> guest: yes, when i went to elementary school, wanting to nurse showed up in the teacher said, oh, we are we're going to check the kids for lights. but i couldn't what had understood what happened. all of us had trent all of us had tran-eights. but in los angeles, i thought maybe they had crossed the border illegally like i had. and it turns out i was the one who had lice. and i was so afraid to go home and tell that's my dad. because i didn't want him to tell me that i was a dirty little girl. i thought he was going to beat me as well be -- because that

was his way of disciplining us. it turned out that he was not angry and he did not beat me. he took me out to the yard and he looked for lice and he cleaned out my hair and he spent two hours looking through my hair, looking for lice, and he was so gentle when he did it. but it was such a beautiful moment for me. then he told me stories about when i was a baby. stories that i can remember, of course, but before he came to the united states -- before he left me in mexico. he told me that every time he would come home for lunch during his breaks, i would be waiting outside with a bowl and i would tell him to give me back. and i wouldn't let anybody bade me except for him. so everyday he would, and basically spent his lunch hour

giving me a bath instead of eating. when he told me that, i thought he was such a beautiful father and i was such a beautiful moment that i got to share with them. >> host: that is so tender and beautiful daughter father. >> guest: yes, my father was a complicated man. he was suffering i think from a bad upbringing. his parents were very abusive towards him. unfortunately, he repeated the same cycle with us kids. but as i was writing the memoir, i was writing even about those hard and painful moments, suffering from a lot of abuse. but i also got a chance to revisit all of the happy memories. one of the things that i hold

most dear is that my father taught me to value education. he was such a tirade about it. he often threatened to send it back to mexico if i didn't do well in school. >> host: was that a scary threat? >> guest: yes it was. i did not want to go back to mexico. i wanted to make him proud. i felt i owed him because he brought me here. i felt that i never wanted my father to say i should not have brought you. it always located me to do well in school and to do all these great things that he wanted me to do. and he never said that to me. as i was writing the book,

really wanted to make sure that he didn't come across as the villain in the story. i really wanted to give him his humanity. there were a lot of great things about my dad. but he was also dealing with a lot of difficulties that unfortunately affected our relationship. >> host: you talked about them and go to church one sunday and he held up a budweiser beer and said, this is my god. when did he pass away? >> guest: he passed away last year. he died of liver cancer was diagnosed with cirrhosis and he kept drinking and never told us. he gave up drinking in the late 1990s. he gave up drinking and he became very religious. he was a seventh-day adventist. but he never got himself

checked. a year and a half ago when he went to the doctor, they told him that he had liver cancer. he really held on to the hope that he would get better and that he would get a liver transplant at some point, and he just never came out of the hospital. >> host: of his sobering up changes relationship with you? >> guest: not very much. by the time he sobered up, things have gotten way too bad. even though he had sobered up, he was still very distant. and he would trade one session for another. he went from being an alcoholic to being this religious fanatic. i remember a lot of times my sister and i would invite him over to family gatherings and he would knock him not come because he had to be a church. he always had to be a church. we always felt like -- we lose

either way. he can be an alcoholic or religious and we will lose either way because he will never make us his priority. i remember when i got married, he was when walking down the aisle. and he was looking at the clock, saying what time is this what it would start? i have to go to my church. hurry up. and i just felt so hurt. because it's like, i only get married once here. your church will always be there. but he kept looking at his clock. when we were done with the ceremony, he took off right after that. he stayed for the reception for a little bit. but i felt so horrible the whole time, thinking that i am never going to be more important to my father and it really hurt me a lot. >> host: where does your mother

figure in the story? >> guest: i never talk about my mother. i have a lot of issues with my mother. anyone who reads "the distance between us" will know why. my mother is still alive and lives about 20 minutes away from me in los angeles. now that i have become a writer and i have to travel a lot, i have to say that that has helped me to have a better relationship with her. right now, i am here and she's with my children. she comes over and she takes care of them. she tries to help me out whenever she can. then also it has helped me to understand her more having my own children. because i can understand now what it's like to be torn between being a mother and being a woman with her own dreams and aspirations.

every time i have to leave my house and my daughter asked me how long i'm going to be gone, i remember my mother and how i would ask her how long we would be gone. and i really do understand, you know, how hard it is to want to do right by your kids. and at the same time want to go off into the world to pursue your own dreams. so i have a better relationship with my mother. definitely there is still an emotional distance and there will always be an emotional distance. >> host: because your mother would be gone for years, is that right? >> guest: yes, that's right. my mother is still like that in a way. were she says things and we

don't fit into the equation sometimes and it has been a struggle to try to get her to be a little bit more motherly. but i have come to accept that that is the way that she is and we just take her as she is. i think it helps because then we are not disappointed. but i do hope that she can be a better grandmother. i know that people change. i know that my grandmother, she wasn't such a great mother. but to us she was the most wonderful grandmother in the world. so i'm hoping i am hoping that that is the way my children feel as well. that is all i want for my kids. to have a good relationship with her.

>> host: has your mother been able to read the book or does she know what's in it? >> guest: my mother does not speak english, so she is not able to read yet. she knows that this is a story about my childhood and growing up in the united states. but i don't think my mother really understands how i saw her and how her actions determined my childhood and how my childhood was defined by her absence. i don't think she understands that. so i am curious to see what she is going to say when it comes out. >> host: the distance between us. the title of the book, i thought

about angela's ashes. >> guest: the person who writes the review for the l.a. times, that's what he compared it to. and i was beyond honored. it was such a wonderful book. for someone to say that my book is a great experience, i was really thrilled. there are similarities, we both talk about poverty and our relationships with their parents and struggling to overcome all the obstacles. being able to go above and beyond what we thought we ever

could. there are many similarities. with the best things about angela's ashes is there is so much humor -- all of that depressing stuff. i would love to write more humor in my work. but i write from a very deep place that has mostly pain and sadness. that's where my writing comes from. i was thinking how similar one of my idols and my daughter. because she also wrote from a place of pain. when i am happy, i cannot write.

i told my husband, you're going to have to make me miserable because i cannot write. i am so happy your. [laughter] i'm so happy here. so it's good to write. >> host: growing up as you did, is it a common experience, do you think. >> guest: it is definitely very common. especially being brought here to the united states as a child by my parents. it is very common. i mean, when i was researching this topic, i learned that 80% of the latin american children in schools get separated from a parent in the process of migration. but that's a whole lot of kids that are being separated from parents that are coming here.

but there is not a lot of awareness when people talk about immigration. they have to consider the other side of immigration which is about the children who get left behind the later comes the united states to be united with their parents and we don't talk about how immigration breaks up families and how it takes a toll on the whole family. this is one of the reasons why i wanted to write about it. because it is an experience that definitely scarred me and has shaped the woman i am today. then also, it is an experience that i think right now, with the dreamers and the young undocumented people who are

fighting to get their legal status, i felt it was an important story. it gives the people inside and what they are situation might be like. i had a green card by the time i was 14 years old. the moment i got my green card the whole world just opened up to me and there were so many possibilities that came my way. i was able to jump on them because i had a green card. and i would really love to see this happen for these dreamers. for us to give them a chance to pursue their dreams. to also give back society. because they will pay everything back, the way i have been paying back my writing and for all the work that i do. so i would love to see that happen for them. >> host: we have been talking with reyna grande, "the distance

between us" is her book. simon & schuster is the publisher. you are watching booktv on c-span2. you are watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> david quammen his neck. his book, "spillover: animal infections and the next human pandemic", looks at avian flu and aids. it originated in animals and spread to humans. it is a national critical book finalist in this presentation is about 40 minutes. >> that evening. i am one of the founders of

politics & prose. we are honored to have a great author here tonight. it's the microphone on? we have one author to ask questions and if you need access to this microphone, you can go around back there. okay, i would like to welcome david quammen. he has come this evening to talk about his new book, "spillover". this is the first time he has been to politics & prose. he has written many books. he writes a lot for natural history writing. he has an honorary degree from colorado college and montana state university where he served as the wallace professor of western american studies. he has also won the national magazine award three times for

articles in a wide variety of magazines, including esquire, the atlantic, and rolling stone. one of his works was for a national geographic story entitled was darwin wrong? he has the title of a contributing writer, with which gives him and requires him to write three articles a year. he studies theoretical ecology and conservation. after this evening, i hope that you will have as much appreciation for his physical strength and stamina as you have for his writing talents.

in his research, he tracks indiana jones style through jungles and rain forests that most of us would never want to step foot in. tonight you're going to learn a new word. it is about infectious diseases that are originated in animals and spread to humans. for those of you who read "the hot zone", i can't believe it's been about 20 years ago that was written, but you have had an early exposure to this scenario. david has elaborated a great deal on his new book, "spillover." it was given a review and said that this is a frightening but critically important book.

for anyone interested in learning about the prospect of the world's next major pandemic. so here is david quammen to talk about his book. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much, barbara. thank you all and it is nice to be here at politics & prose. as barbara said, i have not been here before. i live a little bit too far away and don't publish books that often. it takes me about six or eight years to get one of these things done. i'm going to talk informally for 20 or 25 minutes. i will talk about the book and the subject and to some extent the writing about the book. then we will hear from you and have some conversation.

as barbara explained, this is a book about scary new emerging diseases and where they emerge from. were they emerge from his generally other species, nonhuman animals and nonhuman animals other than our domesticated animals. if you have been following certain stories over the last few months, you know that one point of entry is the daily newspaper itself. we have heard about so many viruses like the hantavirus. people have been dying of west nile fever. there have been 15 people who have died of that fever to sense the month of july.

there has been a bullet outbreak again in central africa. the democratic republic of the congo has an outbreak that has killed three dozen people by now and it's still going on. there was another outbreak across the border in uganda unrelated to the spillover that had caused the outbreak and these things are happening. this is like a drumbeat of disease outbreaks and small crisis is. in the arabian peninsula there was a virus that emerged that closely resembles sars. it really scared the disease experts back in 2003. this new sars virus has killed

one person and another man in the hospital in britain. scientists are watching it carefully. they are watching it carefully because they know that the next big one could look something like that. so as i said, say, there is a drumbeat of these things. the diseases that i mentioned all have two things in common. they all come out of wildlife. they emerge from nonhuman animals. among those that i have mentioned, they are all caused by viruses and that is a particular profile of this phenomenon. the scientists have a fancy name for it. they call these zoanosis.

it could be a protozoan, the creatures that cause malaria, it could be a fungus or a warm. it could be something that causes mad cow disease. but usually it is a virus. a virus more than anything that causes these problems and diseases. they don't always cause disease. sometimes they become harmless pathogens in humans. there is a virus that i talk about in the book. i couldn't resist it because it has such a wonderfully gruesome name. you have to have the right side of the subject where you can find it. with all due respect to the people who suffer and die, there are a lot of deaths in this book. and i respect that.

but i still don't want this book to be a painful and gruesome duty. i also wanted it to be a pleasurable reading experience and i wanted to have moments of suspense and discovery and heroism by some of the scientists. yes, even some moments of humor. it's not a very funny book. but i hope it might be the funniest book about a bullet that you never read. [laughter] as i said, some of these bugs when they pass into human beings are harmless. but more often than not, if the zoanosis passes into humans and causes mayhem there, then we call it a zoo not disease.

the other 40%, everything comes from somewhere. it is above zoanotic in the broader sense. measles comes from a virus that causes the disease in animals in africa. but it has been a humans long enough that it has evolved and become adapted specifically to humans. so it's a different that it is considered a uniquely human virus. but many are passing this back-and-forth from animals to humans.

this includes things like the bullock, and all of the influencers. includes things like hiv and aids. i have talked about the ecological origins of the aids pandemic and we know that the pandemic strain of hiv passed from a single chimpanzee to a single human in a small southeastern corner in central africa. in 19 away, give or take a margin of error, we know there are some wonderful scientists who have worked on the molecular cytogenetics of the viruses that are precursors to hav and the viruses that are in chimps and

monkeys and the genetic diversity in the scientists have managed to locate the spillover of been. the high degree of confidence is always a certain originality. one chimpanzee, one human, presumably a human who cut himself, had blood to blood contact when he was butchering the chimp for food in the very early part of the 20th century. sometime around or before 19 away. beatrice hahn is the scientist who do that work. so there are these diseases, the spillover, they are zoonotic.

one other time i want familiar familiarizing what is -- a bubba lives in chemically and inconspicuously it occurs without causing mayhem. what causes that? and accommodation has evolved. the virus replicates. but it doesn't replicate cataclysmic we but slowly. it does not generally cause symptoms. it hides in its host and then something happens. humans come in contact with it

somehow. the reservoir host gets into humans and then it becomes a zoonotic disease. one of the things that scientists do as they focus on these diseases, they identified the reservoir host. it's killing pick sellers and butchers. it's an isolated virus. the same virus in the human victims and pigs and this is a true case and it happened in 1998. then they went looking for the reservoir host. and they found it in large fruit

flies. the disease was finally tracked through the spillover and here's what happened. people were cutting down malaysia for development and agriculture and cutting down the forests. they had to go looking for fruit and food and nectar somewhere else. they started going closer to the human settlement. the fruit trees were planted by humans. some of the trees planted on two crimes and it was the second stream of income for the pig farmers who ran these great big scale pig farms in central

malaysia. these farmers even planted a tree called the water apple close to their open-air pics guys. they eat the fruit, they chew the mango, they dropped the pulp into the pig sty. they dropped the pcs, they dropped the urine and the virus. the pics taken up, the kids get sick. the pigs are coughing and barking and passing this virus from one to the other. but they are mostly not dying. it's not killing that many pigs. but it becomes a horrendous agriculture problem and it starts getting into humans and it kills 109 people and causes the government of malaysia to

kill 1.1 million pigs. some of these farms, people were so scared by this disease that they were abandoning their own farms and runway from their own pig farms. at one point the pigs were running loose through the villages. it's like a nightmare scenario, but it really happened. it's like something out of the book of exodus. infectious pigs running wild through the countryside, coughing a virus. one fellow called it a one-mile barking cough because he could hear the sick pigs coming and you knew that your farm would be next. this is a true story, encephalitis is what resulted in humans. this is what do these scientists do. they try to solve the ecology and biology of these new

diseases. where does the virus led? what is the reservoir host a mad cow humans come in contact with the virus and in many cases it is an ecologic disruption it causes the spillover. it gets into an intermediate nytimes, pigs were horses are referred to as the amplifier host. he shed and then the virus gets in the people. in australia the virus is called after a suburban of brisbane. in 1994 when that town had horses that started the diet.

they try to figure it out. did they get some poisonous feed? a veterinarian and sports trainer tried to save the horses. the stable foreman got sick. he went into the hospital and the veterinarian never got sick. the trainer died. the isolated virus -- they found a new one and they named it hendrick after the suburb. then they did the disease detection. where did the virus come from? well, the fellow was a cheap detective bonus. he sampled all sorts of animals. he sampled kangaroos and rats and mice and insects. he did not find a virus. finally, he sampled fruit bats

and found a virus that match would have killed the horses and the trainer. it is a knock on the door and a reminder to all of us of where these things come from. how these things emerge. why they spillover. the fact that they are not all independent cases but part of a pattern, and that reflects what we humans are doing on the planet. then they get into humans. in some cases, they cause a local outbreak which comes to an end on its own. in other cases, they caused widespread suffering and death. hiv being the case and point

there. i might stop there and see if people have questions. there are certainly a lot of other points that i can touch on. but let me just say that i would love to hear what you have to say. >> thank you, david. i have a toasty warm memory of seeing you at the springs. do you still remember that? , i do. nobody knows how many viruses are are. nobody knows how many species of invertebrate animals and plants and fungi there are with any

precision. there are estimates ranging from 8 million to 100 million species. but then when you add the viruses and bacteria, nobody knows. percentage of viruses may as well be a small percentage. but the ones that are the exception of consequential. >> hello, i enjoyed your book, your previous book, very much. i had a question about the study of the genealogy of these diseases. i was curious, using the human genome where there is evidence that killed a lot of people, but

it's now totally harmless because all the survivors have reproduced and that's all there is left. looking back in time at old pandemics to trace diseased valet. the sema? >> i have not. certainly one of the things that is very interesting to me is tracing something that they call retroviruses. hiv is one. other viruses insert themselves permanently into the human genome. we don't know exactly -- maybe in some cases they have junk dna, but they are there. they can be recognized as belonging to this or that virus

family. in terms of the relationship between the infections and the human genome, it's very interesting. i cannot point you towards any particular work that has been done that i know of. it would have to be a degree that i don't know. i can't tell you much more than that. >> i have a question. we have heard you speak about different diseases. the examples that you gave us for the dozens and hundreds and maybe thousands. but the reaction seems to be -- it seemed like the local government was overreacting when trying to solve the situation. in fact there was a west nile

virus detected and they started spraying the swamp areas. my question is are we doing harm when we are trying to solve these issues? there are other diseases that kill millions and we are not doing much. these are such exotic diseases, when we hear about them -- well, we get into the shot. the reaction seems to be too much at times. >> i hear you asking two questions. one question is are we doing something that is causing more harm than good and are we taking these things out of proportion to the damage that they do. well, i asked the same thing of the fellow that studies the

virus that i mentioned. there is a different story in bangladesh or he is a muslim country and it doesn't passer pays but it's transmitted into things that people drink. people drink it and they get the virus. so i talked to a fellow who was from the cdc and i asked him the same thing. there are hundreds of thousands of children dying of bacterial diarrhea and pneumonia in bangladesh. he was based in a place called the cholera hospital.

i asked him why bother with this disease which kills a few hundred people each year when you have all these other diseases. and he told me that this is such a nasty disease and it has such potential, that we cannot ignore it simply because it is not small. it could be large. it is important to take these more old-fashioned garden-variety diseases variously and keep this into perspective. it's also important to be vigilant about these new emerging diseases. because in 1981, we had a disease emerge called aids and it was one of the influences that emerged anew each year. that is the response i have heard about why study these small diseases very seriously.

you never know when one will become the next big one. in terms of the things we do to prevent these spillovers, in some cases, yes, we probably do more harm than good. it depends on what the immediate candidate would be. we have done so much futile damage over that decade and it just doesn't work. there are cases when governments have taken rigorous action and it has been very important and beneficial. for instance, a disease in hong kong that killed 10% of the people it infected and spread it from hong kong to toronto and