Their Fate Is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our World PDF

Rating: (3 reviews) Author: ISBN : 9781615190911 New from $8.47 Format: PDF

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At the heart of this book by Nobel Prize–winning immunologist and professor Peter Doherty is this striking observation: Birds detect danger to our health and the environment before we do. Following a diverse cast of bird species around the world—from tufted puffins in Puget Sound to griffon vultures in India, pigeons in East Asia, and wedge-tailed shearwaters off the islands of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—Doherty illuminates birds’ role as an early warning system for threats to the health of our planet and our own well-being.

Their Fate Is Our Fate is an impassioned call not only to attention but to action. As “citizen scientists” we can collect data, vital to cutting-edge research, that depends on the birds that are all around us. Armed with our observations, scientists will continue to uncover new ways to glimpse our future in birds—and to affirm how, truly, their fate is our fate.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: The Experiment; Reprint edition (September 10, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1615190910
• ISBN-13: 978-1615190911
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Their Fate Is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our World PDF

What do birds have to do with global warming, or swine flu, or other alarming occurrences in our world? A lot actually. Doherty explains just how our avian friends are linked to the health of the world and what we can tell from their reactions to it.

In nineteen chapters, this book covers a myriad of different topics relating to health of birds and health of humans. The use of sentinel birds is explained (ever wonder why there are sometimes chickens on golf courses?), what can be derived from studying embryos, Bird Flu, Bugs, the Hawaiian wipeout, cancer, metal detection, and global warming are just some of the topics covered. There are also extensive notes from the author on different topics and a list of Latin binomials for common bird names. The author also provides further reading, references, and other assorted information.

This is a science heavy book and is not for pleasure reading. Not being experienced in the sciences, there were several key medical phrases that I had to do an internet search on just to figure out what the author was talking about. While it is written in relatively easy to understand language, unless you were a science major, there are some things that just can't be put into layman terms. An example sentence from this book would be "Inspired by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray crystallographic pictures (see Chapter 9), which Jim sighted (unbeknown to Rosalind) during the course of a visit to Maurice Wilkins at King's College, London, Watson and Crick built the iconic physical model that shows binary pairings of the deoxyribose nucleic acis (DNA)-adenine-thymine (AT) and guanosine-cytosine (GS)-can assemble as a double helix (pg.123)." This is how the book is written and if that sentence isn't to your liking you probably shouldn't pursue reading it.

I enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. But be aware that it is very technical and can be difficult to stay with reading it. But it is well worth the effort. Although technical, Peter Doherty has a great writing style and interesting stories that relate to the book's title.

We are living thru the 6th great biological extinction in the history of our planet; the anthropogenic mass extinction.

As the author said, "callous greed, deliberate ignorance and true malevolence are very unique to Homo Sapiens". He states that we need to try to recognize destructive environmental trends and then develop mechanisms for minimizing those negative impacts.

Whether we like the idea or not, humanity has the job of managing the planet; a process that can be in direct conflict with long-held beliefs and well-established practices, on the one hand, and with the urban romanticisation and anthropomorphisation of animals (the Bambi Syndrome), on the other.

Mr. Doherty stressed the obvious need for people to let political candidates know that conservation is an important issue for us whenever it comes to how we vote. When you read Doherty's book, you really come to look at pets and all animals differently. It's surprising how pets and various animals can carry a multitude of viruses and diseases that can't be seen or realized by just looking at them.

In reading of how prevalent a multitude of infectious and transmittable illnesses from birds & animals are, and how there are so many different ones, it becomes scary to think of really what's "out there".

I was surprised to learn that scientists are still discovering aspects of what the 8 influenza virus genes actually do!