Book review: Fevered Planet, by John Vidal

“Throughout history,” writes John Vidal, “advances in civilisation – agriculture, domestication, urbanisation and globalisation – have all been accompanied by increasing disease risk. But never before has the human population been so large, so hyper-connected and living at such high densities. We are now approaching a storm of spiralling disease risk.”

That’s the argument made at the start of Vidal’s extraordinary book, Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When we Harm Nature. Looking back...