'We face a drumbeat of these new, emerging diseases that are coming to us from animals,' he said. Quammen says he plans to talk to students about the connection between humans and the animal kingdom. 'It makes them sick, and it kills people, and then it disappears, sometimes for five years at a time.' 'It emerges from the forest, and it terrifies people,' he said. Quammen also wrote a stand alone book on the Ebola virus that was drawn from 'Spillover.' Quammen says the spread of Ebola is still very mysterious. 'so I create a narrative I call 'The Fable of the Voyager.' I tell the reader very clearly that this is hypothetical.' 'There's a gap in what science can tell us as to how this virus spread in central Africa,' Quammen said. He said it's the riskiest book he's written because he does something in a non-fiction book that he's never done before. 'Very different than from the idea that it began in the 1980's with some promiscuous Canadian airline steward know as 'Patient Zero.'' 'The most important because it's about the ecological origins of the AIDS pandemic,' Quammen said. Illinois Public Media's Brian Moline spoke with Quammen and asked him why he calls “The Chimp and the River” the most important and riskiest book he’s written.

Quammen is the author of the award-winning book “ Spillover” about the spread of viruses such as H-I-V and Ebola from animals to humans. His latest book, “The Chimp and the River,” was drawn from “Spillover” and updated to stand alone. I spent several sleepless nights,” Muller said.Author David Quammen is speaking on the University of Illinois campus. I thought with the correct precautions it was an approachable assignment, but that’s not to say that I wasn’t nervous. You have to be in the proximity and it is nerve wracking for sure. “Of course, as a photographer you’re asked to put yourself into positions where the risk levels are high to see burials, to see body collection, to see people who are infected with the virus. Where does it hide, quiet and inconspicuous, between outbreaks?” wrote the story’s author, David Quammen.

“Ebola virus is a zoonosis, an especially nasty and perplexing one-killing many of its human victims in a matter of days, pushing others to the brink of death, and then vanishing. To photograph “Stalking a Killer” in the July issue of National Geographic magazine, photographer Pete Muller traveled deep into the remote forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where bush meat hunters are at risk for being exposed to the Ebola virus to the apex of the killer Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.

Ebola by david quammen