Mycobacterium bovis Infection in Animals and Humans, 2nd ed.

This is the 2nd edition of a book originally published in 1995. The purpose stated in the preface is “to provide medical professionals, allied health scientists, research workers, diagnosticians, and graduate students with current information on the significance of M. bovis in the control and eradication of tuberculosis in animals and humans.” The book contains a great deal of important information and will be a very useful reference source. It consists of 29 chapters contributed by 56 authors. Documentation of the global extent of human infection by Mycobacterium bovis is a strong item in the book and will be of value to those concerned with public health and regulatory veterinary medicine. As with many multi-authored books, the chapters vary considerably in quantity and coverage. For instance, bovine tuberculosis in China is covered in 1.5 pages, while 26 pages are devoted to bovine tuberculosis in Russia and the former states of the Soviet Union. Similarly, tests for diagnosing bovine tuberculosis in live animals, a subject of importance to veterinarians, is covered within 3 pages with only 5 references from this century, while the description of infection by Mycobacterium pinnipedii was 11 pages. The book might be easier to use if the chapters had a common format, related subjects were grouped into sections, and there was some form of critical overview of each section, perhaps by the editors. For instance, the effect of wildlife on control programs in Italy and Ireland is covered in chapters 13 and 14, while similar information from the USA, Canada, and South Africa occurs in chapters 20, 21, and 22, respectively. While the individual chapters are very good, they could have been grouped with an overview of the problem and linked with other information about tuberculosis in wild animals scattered elsewhere in the book. Other groupings might have included information on human infection with M. bovis, economics of tuberculosis, pathogenesis and epidemiology, review of tuberculosis in different areas of the world, and diagnostic and control techniques, all of which are covered in the book. The text is adequately illustrated with tables and graphs. Approximately one-third of the small number of photomicrographs lack contrast. There are a few omissions including lack of coverage of bovine tuberculosis in Australia and New Zealand, and discussion of Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccines that are being actively researched in some countries for use in a variety of species. The preface concludes that the information in this book “is of value to public health officials, state and federal regulatory veterinarians, practitioners, and producers interested in the importation of animals for herd additions.” The book will be of great interest to the first 2 of these groups, as well as to researchers, but of limited value for practitioners or producers.

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