Six Modern Plagues.

In his generally positive review of my book, Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them (Walters 2003), Donald S. Burke (2004) neglected to mention that Six Modern Plagues goes out of its way re differentiate between fact and theory. I stated, for example, that the basic mechanism of the emergence of human immunodeficiency virus "is still unproven," that "there is some evidence" for Salmonella drug resistance being acquired from fish farms in Asia, that the widely accepted belief that mad cow disease originated from scrapie in sheep is "still just a hypothesis," and that "perhaps" an infected person first introduced West Nile virus into the United States. However, Burke's blanket assertion in the review that "an infected arriving human could not have been the origin of the West Nile epidemic in Queens, New York" confuses fact with theory, indeed. This may be his informed opinion, but it is far from scientifically established fact.

The author receives royalties fern the publication and distribution of this book.

Mark Jerome Waiters

University of South Florida 

St. Petersburg, Florida

E-mail: [e-mail]

REFERENCE

Burke DS. 2004. Book review: Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them. Environ Health Perspect 112:A66.

Walters MJ. 2003. Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them. Washington. DC:Island Press.