Kindle Price: $20.25

Save $5.70 (22%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Follow the author

Jacques Pepin
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Origins of AIDS 2nd Edition, Kindle Edition

by Jacques Pépin (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 80 ratings
See all formats and editions
It is now forty years since the discovery of AIDS, but its origins continue to puzzle doctors, scientists and patients. Inspired by his own experiences working as a physician in a bush hospital in Zaire, Jacques Pépin looks back to the early twentieth-century events in central Africa that triggered the emergence of HIV/AIDS and traces its subsequent development into the most dramatic and destructive epidemic of modern times. He shows how the disease was first transmitted from chimpanzees to man and then how military campaigns, urbanisation, prostitution and large-scale colonial medical interventions intended to eradicate tropical diseases combined to disastrous effect to fuel the spread of the virus from its origins in Léopoldville to the rest of Africa, the Caribbean and ultimately worldwide. This is an essential perspective on HIV/AIDS and on the lessons that must be learned as the world faces another pandemic.
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-1108487498
  2. Edition
    2nd
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Cambridge University Press
  5. Publication date
    January 21, 2021
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    14439 KB
  8. See all details
Next page
Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Superb ... Pépin rightly argues that, apart from social factors promoting HIV spread, inherent properties of the virus must determine its fitness to become pandemic. He also provides the best analysis I have read of the declining HIV-2 epidemic in West Africa.' Nature

'Extensively referenced, [this] well-written book reads like a detective story, while at the same time providing a didactic introduction to epidemiology and evolutionary genetics. As far as the origins of AIDS are concerned, unless some completely new evidence emerges, it will be difficult to come up with a better explanation than Pepin's.' Science

'This is scientific history at its most compelling … He writes with grace and feeling, and makes accessible the scientific and clinical issues. Above all, he comes across as a humane and caring doctor. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the scourge that has defined our times.' The Times Literary Supplement

‘A model study of epidemiology, microbiology, genetics, and social and cultural history … The Origins of AIDS bears brilliant witness to the costs of living in a world plagued by emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases'. The New Republic

‘A remarkable feat … works out the most likely path the virus took during the years it left almost no tracks'. The New York Times

'An impressive feat of scientific scholarship … absorbing throughout, interweaving quantitative data with historical narrative and lively biographies.' The Lancet

About the Author

Jacques Pépin is Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. He has conducted research on infectious diseases in sixteen African countries.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08L9BGG3Z
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (January 21, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 21, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 14439 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 394 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 80 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Jacques Pepin

Jacques Pepin

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
80 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Marco Viti
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that will keep you awake at night
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2021
Verified Purchase
I read this book and it kept me awake at night. Everything went wrong, a series of accidents, poor planning, greed and so much ignorance. Who was patient zero? How did he or she had access to the Congo River to the city of Leopoldville now Kinshasa?
The spread of HIV first in Haiti then in United States due to a Plasma clinic in Haiti left me with no words and made me realize how opaque was our society just 50 years ago.
I sometimes wonder if the virus AIDS-HIV just started few decades later, if it could have gone this far in infecting so many millions of innocent people. I highly recommend this book if you want to dive deep on one of the biggest adversity that afflicted the Human Kind.
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Becca
5.0 out of 5 stars HIV'S own Behind the Music
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2021
Verified Purchase
Absolutely great book! If the last in-depth info you really looked at on this disease was the early aughts (or before) this book will bring you up to speed. While it is scholarly it is not even remotely what I would describe as academic writing...it's like having dinner with a particularly charming doctor or epidemiologist. You'll get a heads up when the dry stuff is coming, but he's not going to talk down to you and there are droll asides to keep things from getting unbearably grim. Just terrific!
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
NH
5.0 out of 5 stars To learn about history of HIV
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2022
Verified Purchase
Good book to learn about the origins and spreading of HIV. Tones of data and very interesting historic framework to understand how this virus spread from Africa to the rest of the world based on the exploitation of labor force from Haiti. A must read
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
M.B.
5.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive history of where AIDS comes from
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2022
Jacques Pépin, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Sherbrooke, has written a comprehensive history on the early beginnings of HIV and AIDS in this book, "The Origins of AIDS." The book covers a tremendous amount of historical ground and includes many interesting anecdotes in the history of infectious disease.

Large chunks of the book focus on the impact of colonialism in central Africa, from urbanization to new trading networks to the overall disruption of life. Pépin has brought extensive sources from his research in France to the book in order to show how Europeans - particularly the French and Belgian colonial regimes - upset the region in ways that triggered HIV's first infections in humans.

With his own research and the research of many others, Pépin claims that a version of HIV crossed from chimpanzees to humans in the early 20th century. HIV exploded when it arrived in the huge metropolitan areas like Leopoldville (presently Kinshasa) that were set up by Europeans in order to exploit the continent. The explosion was aided by many colonial factors, but perhaps most importantly by unhygienic and slipshod medical practices, including not sterilizing syringes during vaccination campaigns despite knowing the potential effect, and policies that encouraged prostitution.

During the political upheaval of the Democratic Republic of Congo's independence, HIV was transferred to Haitian advisors stationed there and then spread throughout North America by companies that exploited the international trade in blood. In the meantime, HIV continued its vicious course throughout Africa and was, at various times, transmitted to different parts of the world.

Parts of the book were a bit technical for me as a layperson with little medical knowledge. The author acknowledges this and apologizes for it, but continues with the history. "The Origins of AIDS" is quite complicated, but Pépin does a nice job of compartmentalizing information into chapters and sections, making it easy for readers to skim through some of the heavier parts. Chapter 14, titled "A Long Journey," is an excellent summary of the entire history.

The book includes endnotes and a very comprehensive index.
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Scott J Pearson
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, meticulous, compelling, and intriguing
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
Understanding the origins of AIDS is important for at least three reasons. First, HIV/AIDS is an important biomedical global disease that is still not conquered. Second, much cultural rhetoric due to stigma exists in society about this disease, and blame for the AIDS pandemic have been wrongfully placed at the feet of many oppressed groups. Third, contemporary events with coronavirus have shown that humans aren’t as safe from disease and pandemic as we might imagine, and understanding pandemics more generally is an advantageous endeavor.

In the second edition of this work, Pépin makes a compelling case that HIV/AIDS arose in central Africa, probably in Cameroon, from a hunter preparing and eating infected ape-meat. This likely happened in the early twentieth century, not mid-century as traditional tales tell. It was soon transmitted to the metropolis of Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The contagion was spread by the medical establishment (that is, iatrogenically) through intravenous injections with insufficient cleaning. Tribal social conditions in prior generations in Africa might have kept this disease at bay, but rapid urbanization contributed to the disease’s spread through a high male:female ratio, which encouraged sexually polyamorous relationships.

The disease was spread to North America through Haiti. Haitian teachers had come to the Congo to serve as civil servants (due to the collapse of colonialism), contracted the disease through normal sexual relations, and brought it back with them to their homeland. Pépin suggests, again, that iatrogenic means were instrumental in its spread. Contrary to popular legend that claims that licentious homosexuality deserves most of the blame, he makes a detailed case that plasmapheresis centers to collect human plasma amplified the disease among Haitians in and around the capital Port-au-Prince. Eventually, sexual contact and travel brought it to New York and San Francisco, where it spread rapidly among illicit drug users and a homosexual community that was just coming out of social oppression. It continued to spread in sub-Saharan Africa, and the American medical-industrial complex continued to study and define the disease as it spread. Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, simple public health measures (like education about condoms in at-risk populations) could have slowed its reach dramatically.

Pépin tells this complicated tale with detailed reasoning gained through a medical degree, an epidemiology PhD, and a lifetime of medical work in Africa. He seamlessly combines social and political history with medical research to trace this disease’s spread. Of course, he acknowledges that he cannot define every step with certainty, but instead reasons through the probabilities of the possibilities with academic rigor. The first edition of this work has been well-received by the scientific and literary communities, so it likely will continue to gain an audience among interested parties worldwide.

This work addresses many potential audiences – including those interested in global and public health, international politics, AIDS and infectious disease research and treatment, the spread of disease and pandemics, contemporary affairs in North American or Europe, colonial and post-colonial African history, and the social theory of oppressed groups. Frankly, it is a compelling work of genius, and kudos go to Cambridge University Press for publishing it in a second edition. My interest was gripped from the opening to the closing, and I sincerely hope that others will hold it in similar esteem.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Justine Purnell
5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2021
Verified Purchase
A well written factual book.
Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report