The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an African Forest

by David Quammen

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Although The Chimp and the River focuses primarily on the ecological origins of HIV, and on the scientific work done to trace those origins, the scope of the human catastrophe that is the AIDS pandemic must be noted again, first and foremost, even here in a brief note to record literary debts. We all stand chastened, grieved, and diminished by the miseries and losses that have been suffered by our fellow men and women, as well as awed by and grateful for the courage, determination, and heart of those who have fought against this catastrophe in so many ways.

  As noted above, a number of busy scientists gave their generous cooperation to my research toward this book, by sitting for interviews or responding to e-mail or telephone questions: Robert Gallo, Jane Goodall, Beatrice Hahn, Jean-Marie Kabongo, Phyllis Kanki, Brandon Keele, Elizabeth Lonsdorf, Martin Muller, J. J. Muyembe, Martine Peeters, Jane Raphael, Dirk Teuwen, Karen Terio, and Michael Worobey. Most of those people, in addition, did me the vital favor of reading and correcting draft pages. Three other scientists, whose work does not directly involve AIDS, also read this book in its original form (as a long chapter of Spillover) and offered keen editorial advice: Charlie Calisher, Mike Gilpin, and Jens Kuhn. I’m deeply grateful to them all.

  My gratitude extends also to Patrick Atimnedi, Anton Collins, Zacharie Dongmo, Ofir Drori, Mike Fay, Barbara Fruth, Shadrack Kamenya, Iddi Lipende, Julius Lutwama, Pegue Manga, Neville Mbah, Apollonaire Mbala, Achile Mengamenya, Jean Vivien Mombouli, Albert Munga, Max Mviri, Hanson Njiforti, Moïse Tchuialeu, and Lee White, all of whom assisted my inquiries about HIV’s origins in Africa. There were others who helped in many ways during the broader effort of researching Spillover (including my editors and other colleagues at National Geographic, among whom that larger project had its beginning), and though their fields of expertise or activity lay outside the immediate frame of the HIV/AIDS story, they contributed much toward allowing me to place that story within its appropriate context: as the most consequential of all modern instances of zoonotic disease. I thanked them by name in Spillover, and I thank them again collectively here.