From age-old scourges like smallpox and tuberculosis to emerging threats like AIDS and SARS, our interactions with animals have played a pivotal role as the source of human disease.

Before there was swine flu (H1N1), there was bird flu (H5N1). In spite of the visibility of H1N1, leading public health authorities still predict as inevitable a pandemic of influenza, triggered by bird flu and expected to lead to millions of deaths around the globe. The influenza virus has existed for millions of years as an innocuous intestinal virus of wild ducks. What turned a harmless waterborne duck virus into a killer? In Bird Flu, Dr. Michael Greger traces the human role in the evolution of this virus, whose humble beginnings belie its transformation into a killer mutant strain with the potential to become as ferocious as Ebola and as contagious as the common cold. In the face of the coming pandemic, Dr. Greger reveals what we can do to protect our families and what human society to can do to reduce the likelihood of such catastrophes in the future.